


Everything

by itachis-sick-ass-mf-sword (driftershiddenfivehead)



Category: Naruto
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon, Angst, Bittersweet, Consequences, F/M, Fantasizing, Fate & Destiny, Graphic Description, Grief/Mourning, Inspired by Music, Inspired by Poetry, M/M, Medical Trauma, Mental Breakdown, Psychological Trauma, Psychosis, Some Humor, Suicidal Thoughts, Suicide Attempt, Temporary Character Death, Tragic Romance, True Love, Unhappy Ending, Wishful Thinking
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-04
Updated: 2020-07-04
Packaged: 2021-03-05 01:34:43
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 7
Words: 24,878
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25066255
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/driftershiddenfivehead/pseuds/itachis-sick-ass-mf-sword
Summary: "Through no fault of his own, Naruto had been one way for almost their entire lives - he had been Naruto, with Sasuke Uchiha as a constant presence in his life. And now that such an important and pervasive variable had been removed indefinitely, Naruto was someone else. He was someone after, someone without, a person who'd lost their shadow and therefore ceased to fully exist." [COMPLETE]
Relationships: Hyuuga Hinata/Uzumaki Naruto, Uchiha Sasuke/Uzumaki Naruto
Comments: 10
Kudos: 20





	1. Five

**Foreward**

This is a short story adapted from one of my other fics to be published on its own. It centers around Sasuke and Naruto's relationship and the love that exists between the two of them. To a similar degree, however, it focuses on grief, traumatic stress/PTSD, and depression, and the various ways they can manifest within different people. Most prominently featured here are these perspectives from Naruto, Sasuke, and Madara(in decreasing order of magnitude). The theme of the plot was inspired by The Monkey's Paw, of desirable changes having undesirable consequences. Needless to say, there is a ton of angst. And a few sun-bursts of humor.

This is an alternate-universe in which several key differences can be observed:

  * Naruto and Hinata begin a relationship after Pain's assault
  * Hinata overcomes her weakness, and is able to save Naruto instead of T-posing in the rain
  * Neji does not die in the war(see above point)
  * Existential/Alien threats are taken seriously
  * Naruto and Hashirama are able to Talk-no-Jutsu Madara 
  * Madara and Obito survive, and never became Ten-tails jinichuuriki



* * *

**The plot is very simple: After being pardoned for his crimes, instead of leaving the village Sasuke commits suicide. One of the lives saved during the war is exchanged in order to bring him back. There is obviously fallout from all of this** **.**

* * *

The first two chapters - both very short - are from Izuna and Madara's perspectives, for some set up/priming. Just telling you so you aren't stuck making that "what? huh?" face like John Travolta.

 **MAJOR TRIGGER WARNING:** As stated in the tags, the suicide and life-saving efforts are very graphic. Not in an over-the-top slasher movie way, but in a realistic and anatomical sense. Intestines aren't 'ramen noodles spilling forth from a pierced belly', they are goddamn intestines. I would also describe the descriptions of various psychological states as being graphic as well, and potentially triggering. Peep the psychosis tag, which I will say includes dissociation/depersonalization, anhedonia, and hallucinations.

Note - **_bold_ **or _**"bold"**_ text denotes inner-speech from a voice that does not belong to the person hearing it in their head.

**xxxxxxx**

* * *

**Mad Girl’s Love Song**

"I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead;

I lift my lids and all is born again.

(I think I made you up inside my head.)

The stars go waltzing out in blue and red,

And arbitrary blackness gallops in:

I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead.

I dreamed that you bewitched me into bed

And sung me moon-struck, kissed me quite insane.

(I think I made you up inside my head.)

God topples from the sky, hell's fires fade:

Exit seraphim and Satan's men:

I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead.

I fancied you'd return the way you said,

But I grow old and I forget your name.

(I think I made you up inside my head.)

I should have loved a thunderbird instead;

At least when spring comes they roar back again.

I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead.

(I think I made you up inside my head.)"

\- Sylvia Plath

* * *

**Five - Fallen Youth**

**Land of Fire - Warring States Era**

The orchestrations of battle pervaded the area around him: swords clashed, armor clattered, flesh tore, men grunted and screamed as they ripped the lives out of one another, all-together composing a magnificent and terrifying symphony. Suffocating, the stench of blood and death and earth clung to everything, lingering in the lower atmosphere like a noxious fog. His chest burned as ragged breaths forced their way through the cracked lips of his arid mouth, desperate to gather more oxygen for his aching lungs and tired muscles. If he paused for even a moment he would surely collapse from exhaustion; it is always harder to start moving again than to keep doing so without stopping in the first place.

Izuna Uchiha had never felt more alive.

Dipping underneath and dodging around the pointed blows of his enemies with ease, Izuna displayed his impressive skill and expertise in taijutsu even without the employ of his sharingan. Using his katana, he cut down the Senju’s men left and right, the blade becoming a vessel for his hatred of the rival clan. Blood sprayed across his face and wet his black hair as he slit the throat of the shinobi unfortunate enough to wind up in front of him. He licked his lips to taste the mess he’d created, grinning victoriously while he watched the body collapse, the partially decapitated head of that poor Senju fool bouncing against the rocks as it fell. Lifeless eyes stared into the sky, and for a brief moment Izuna wondered what it was the dead were seeing, why they were always looking up.

A flash of white hair caught his attention, coaxing him back into the fray of combat. Metallic ringing filled his ears when his blade clanged against Tobirama Senju’s ninjatō, the sound resonating high-pitched and clear like a bell used to signal the beginning of a spar - yet this was far from a duel between comrades. 

The rest of the world faded from perception, giving way to a deafening silence; violence and instinct took over Izuna’s mind and body while he fought ferociously against his sworn nemesis. Sharingan crimson challenged albino red, gazes locked as they danced around death, with the guided elegance in each step accentuated by the melodic cries of their fallen clansmen. Shadows being all that remained of the aforementioned men around them, a lone figure in Izuna’s periphery jutted out from the mist, snaring his attention like a feline beast latching onto the throat of unsuspecting prey, and-

**_The God in the Moon must come down soon._ **

Eyes snapped to the horizon at the behest of the stranger’s cryptic, nonsensical voice inside of his head. It was night. The stars winked down at him in sinister flirtations; the unknown beckoning with the long, curling claws of a predator. Only a moment ago it was mid-morning; how long had he been fighting? It was a relief to find reprieve - always fighting, they were always fighting. He was tired of fighting, he decided; tired of funerals, tired of falling asleep to the wails of bereaved mothers as they held tight the cold remains of their slaughtered children, tired of the haunted looks in his relative’s eyes, the same look his own bore; tired of council meetings filled with hopeless optimism, of frivolous desires for a peace that would either never come or if it did, would never last. 

The battlefield was again devoid of sound or motion, the air stagnant and chilled. Warmth pooled around him, thick with the metallic scent of hemoglobin as it bombarded his olfactory senses with particulate erythrocytes. Blood. His blood, spilling from the mutilated clump of tissue that was formerly his abdomen, cradling his body as it grew cold. 

Confusing at first; what weapon would cause such a mess? Surely the sleek form of a steel sword would not. A faint twitch of his fingers brought with it the realization that the hand preceding them was entangled within the wound, bound to it by the gristle and sinew viciously torn from his entrails, as if he had been mutilating his own-

Blinking at the night sky, his mind suddenly cleared of all previous thought; there was no pain, his nervous system had long since gone into and beyond hypovolemic shock. The Moon swallowed his vision and consumed his soul. His everything. Madara. His brother. The God; the Moon. He stopped the God, didn’t he - he sure hoped so. Or was it the other way around? 

Madara and the Moon. The only two things that mattered. His everything.

The night was dark. Too dark. Oh, God, oh god when did the sky become so dark?

He was unable to look away from its omnipotent gaze. Blood red, swirling with rings, swimming with tomoe. _Ichi, ni, san, shi, go, roku, shichi, hachi, kyu_ ; he counted nine magatama. It was divine, complete, final: the Moon will take care of him, of everyone. The alpha and omega, the first and the last, the beginning and - and it is everything, nothing. It is infinite. 

Izuna understands now, why the dead are always looking up. He sees it, too.

* * *

**Song(s) for this chapter:**

DNA by Lia Marie Johnson


	2. Four

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Songs for this chapter: Fantasia The Lightning Sonata, Op. 1: I - by Tony Cicoria

**Four - Wash**

**Land of Fire - End of Warring States Era**

Grief.

It comes in waves; cold, murky water tossing Madara about like a rag-doll beholden to a rampaging toddler. The current's maw sits open, sharp teeth poised and ready to sever the thin threads of sanity keeping him anchored to reality, waiting for him to give up and sink into its cavernous depths. 

At first Madara is drowning; the ship carrying the life previously known to him reduced to the mess of wreckage now spread throughout the sea, reminding him of the beauty - the familiarity - of the ship that was and is no more. He is helpless, bobbing and beaten by the waves, unable to muster the courage to swim. Movement is too painful, movement is no longer instinct. Perhaps this was how his brother had felt.

Why hadn't he moved that day? What was he looking at that was so distracting?

Madara found some piece of the wreckage to hang on to for a while. Standing in the empty bedroom, his gaze -  _ their _ gaze, now - scanned over the smattering of belongings left behind; the only indication that anyone had ever lived there at all, as his brother's room lacked any personal touches. The futon was unmade, blankets mussed from a restless night's sleep, and the pillow still retained a small indentation from where Izuna's head would recline into its soft embrace. 

A small closet with the sliding door ajar revealed a row of neat, organized clothing for whatever occasions they might wind up in. From left to right: training clothes, casual yukatas for daily happenings, a particularly ugly hakama Izuna wore only to council meetings so that he could piss off the elders, a hakama for all other normal occasions, and finally, at the farthest end of the enclosure was an empty space to store his armor whenever they weren't in battle. Armor which was currently in use, even if only to prove utterly useless in the end.

They were going to bury it with him.

For a time, all Madara can do is keep floating. He had a duty to his clan regardless of ailments, including bereavement; this is what he'd signed up for when deciding to take over. The waves were enormous in the beginning, towering like tsunamis and decimating his solitude without mercy, appearing with such frequency as to afford him only scarce opportunities to breathe. 

Not once did he shed a tear for his baby brother, however, not even in the privacy of his personal quarters. Privacy that Madara at one point in time cherished but now loathed, the silence exposing him to his innermost thoughts, to images of Izuna laid in a pool of his own blood, babbling incoherently while he tore at his shredded abdomen and leaking eyes.

After a while, the waves still came, but they were further apart.

When he found himself struck and unable to swim, Madara would relegate his presence to the peaceful quietude of the Naka shrine. Often he knelt in front of the small pool of water in the center of the upper chamber, watching the flickering white and gold-scaled bodies of the Koi fish dance beneath its surface. Madara made it a ritual to bring his uneaten meals along with him on these trips; he tore off little pieces of nutriment and dropped them into the pond, watching with content as the otherworldly creatures swam to the surface and opened their puckering mouths to nibble at the offerings. 

He wondered if the Koi were really so intelligent as the scholars proclaimed; if they recognized that something had changed, that the hand feeding them was no longer Izuna's but his own. The pleasure of remembering - fond moments, shared childhood memories - had been taken from Madara upon his brother's death; there was no longer anyone to remember with after Izuna passed. Only the koi remained now, and as sad as it seemed, they were the closest thing to a co-rememberer that Madara was able to find.

Izuna Uchiha, impatient as he was, loved to fish; at least, that is what he told himself, because he'd always held a fascination for aquatic beings. Madara on the other hand had no interest, preferring the company of his falcons instead. There was one occasion, for Izuna's twenty-second birthday, that Madara agreed to accompany him on their first-ever fishing trip. They traveled to a lake several kilometres away from the Uchiha compound, prepared to spend the day catching trout. Using borrowed wooden rods from the hunter's supply, they stood side by side on the shore and waited for some poor soul to bite. 

The hot sun beat down on them for hours, all the while not a single fish dared to take the bait. Izuna was already bored once the first hour had passed, disillusioned from his fantasy of reeling in some hulking beast, so they gave up and spent the rest of the day sparring with their fishing rods. There had been a moment during their battle when Izuna's line came loose, the metal hook at its end finding a comfortable purchase within the firm flesh of Madara's ass. At first Madara had filled with homicidal rage in response to Izuna's guffaws and mockery, but upon seeing the genuine joy radiating from his younger brother he couldn't help but laugh at the absurdity of his predicament as well.

In between the waves there were bits of life, where Madara could breathe, could function.

After signing the peace treaty with the Senju, construction of the village began rather quickly. He would amble along the gravel-laden pathways, trailing behind Hashirama while he prattled on about Hokages and zoning laws, and which color of tulips did Madara think would look best along the fencing around the Uchiha district? 

Madara couldn't give less of a shit about tulips, but he hummed at his friend, pretending to think long and hard, and requested that the flowers be orange. Occasionally and without warning Madara would be hit by another wave, and on these days he wore expressions harsh enough to scare away not just the village's children but many of his own clansmen as well. Popularity was not a quality he possessed among the residents, and when Madara overheard Tobirama Senju's argument against allowing him a chance at leading the village he couldn't help but agree. 

He was bitter, his moods were unstable, and every year by some impossible feat Madara became more and more waterlogged by his grief, as if all of his imprisoned teardrops had pooled and stagnated at the base of his skull, coagulating into infectious muck. But it was their fault, Madara told himself, it was Tobirama who caused this. It was his father, Butsuma, and Madara's father Tajima, it was the clan elders who came before them, it was the entire rest of the world and human history, it was their cries for peace while waging wars and sending their children - some toddlers still - to certain death. 

Thinking of peace while spilling blood was an irony that only humanity could live in blissful ignorance of.

Madara couldn't eat, he couldn't sleep, and he was constantly torn between killing himself and killing everyone else. Death was not appealing, but the agony of living was unbearable. When Madara looked into the mirror, he knew that the reflection he saw was all that he would ever be: an empty shell of a man, a mirage without substance, without anything but hatred and despair and impeccable hair. A fate too terrible to accept. So, he stopped looking into mirrors entirely.

It was as if Madara was slowly hemorrhaging his humanity, and he could no longer clearly define the difference between sorrow and fear. Hashirama would tell him that time heals all wounds, but such a phrase assumed that the pain he felt was finite. 

No matter how much time passed, Madara still found himself searching the faces of clansmen, of children running around on the streets, hoping that Izuna’s would appear among them. That it was all some elaborate nightmare: he hadn't really died, and was only lost in the crowd for a moment, waiting for his big brother's hand to find him and pull him out of the fray, back to the safety of their shared world in which nothing mattered beyond keeping one another safe. Where as long as they had their bond, they would never be want for anything else. 

In that world, Madara had everything, but in the real world his everything had been lost. In the real world there was nothing.

Madara became accustomed to watching the Moon during his sleepless nights, which encompassed most nights. Its magnificent, celestial form tugged at the waters of sorrow, wrenching back the seas to form those terrific waves Madara had become so familiar with. For It he would dare to pour out his soul, and the ugly, rancid words that spilled forth were shocking; the loneliness of the soul in its appealing self-consciousness was horrific and overwhelming, but the Moon never cast judgement. 

The Moon was Madara's only ally, and a part of him. It controlled the tides, it controlled his fate, it turned his dark and ruinous ocean of misery into a brilliant montage of silver waves. It could be his salvation. As Madara looked out of the window towards his companion in the sky for perhaps the thousandth time, he pictured again in his mind the image of Izuna laying on the ground, the gaping black void of his empty eye sockets trained on the stars as he muttered his last bearings of consciousness:

"Brother, do you see….the Moon? It's….right there. I understand."

* * *


	3. Three

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Songs for this chapter: Wake Up by EDEN and I'm Sorry, I'm Trying by nothing,nowhere.

**Three - Wake Up**

**October 11th - Valley of the End**

  
  


“You’ve finally come to, huh?”

  
  


Sasuke blinked as he awoke, his mind blissfully blank while the burred edges of his vision sharpened and revealed the clear night sky looming overhead. The valley was silent other than a faint drip echoing from some place nearby, a soft sound tugging at his eyelids. Nature’s lullaby coaxed him back towards the brink of unconsciousness, but just before he could succumb to the dark limbo of sleep, the one place he dared to call ‘home’, a jolt of white-hot agony tore through his body. He gasped in pain, and upon looking down at its source Sasuke saw the shredded stump of flesh and bone that had taken the place of his forearm.

  
  


“As you can see, if either of us moves too much we’ll bleed out and die.” 

  
  


Confusion struck him for a moment, because he didn’t think that it sounded like such a bad fate - and then Sasuke remembered just _who_ was talking to him. This cleared up his perplexity regarding the previous statement, but in doing so brought about a fresh bout of bewilderment. 

  
  


“Why...do you do it? Why do you go so far just to get in my way? I finally gained the power...to enter the darkness. To sever all ties. Everyone else tried to cut ties with me, too...except you,” Sasuke said, his voice cracking with emotion. “You never tried to cut me off. Why do you keep involving yourself with me?”

  
  


He rolled his head to the side to look at the blonde laying next to him, who was smiling softly and tracing the clouds with his gaze. Sasuke could see the warmth within his eyes, despite the violet rings around them and the pallor of his skin. Skin decorated with an assortment of greens, yellows and purples, a testament to the explosive nature of their bond. No matter what Sasuke did or said to try and push him away, Naruto’s optimism never seemed to fade, not even in the face of death. It was confusing, irritating, completely absurd...and beautiful.

  
  


“You know that already,” Naruto said, a small chuckle escaping his lips. “I mean, come on, don’t you? Your body can’t move, but your fat mouth still can-”

  
  


“Just answer me,” Sasuke snarled, anger swelling in his chest. It always annoyed him when Naruto danced his way around something instead of getting to the point. Dances were for poets and romantics like Madara Uchiha, and had no place mingling with their particular brand of raw passion and brutal intensity. Besides, Sasuke didn’t want to say what he thought he knew: if he was _right_ , then he wasn’t prepared to deal with the scenario. 

  
  


Naruto finally met Sasuke’s eyes, and the smile dropped from his features, replacing their previous warmth with something else entirely. Something that made Sasuke’s heart tremble with anticipation, threatening to infect his lungs with a kind of desperation he refused to show. 

  
  


“If this had all happened when we were fifteen or somethin’, I would have said that it's because you’re my friend.”

  
  


“Which you have said before, numerous times,” Sasuke interjected, the sarcasm in his head not reaching the tone with which he spoke.

  
  


Unsurprising, he thought; that seemed to be happening more and more lately as the curve of his emotions continued to flatten with each passing week, a pattern that had begun shortly after his confrontation with Danzo. Winding down, making their final preparations for the long sleep ahead. 

  
  


“Yeah. Back then I didn’t really know what that meant to me, you know? But as I got a little older, I started to understand. Well,” Naruto paused to give him an awkward grin, and if they hadn’t lost so much blood the dobe probably would have blushed too. 

  
  


Swallowing thickly, Sasuke felt a flutter in his abdomen, and he prayed that it was a cluster of black ascalapha moths lurking in there, rather than butterflies. The pain from his wound was pushed out by something else, an unfamiliar sensation that left him feeling slightly woozy, but not at all unpleasant, and the lack of said unpleasantness felt foreign as it invaded his body. He had felt...whatever _this_ was once or twice before, but only in passing; now was the first time Sasuke actually allowed himself to acknowledge the sensation. Or rather, the first time he lacked the energy to ignore it. 

  
  


“I actually didn’t realize until a few months ago, after I started dating Hinata,” Naruto continued. “You’re my family and my best friend, Sasuke, and you always will be. But you’re also- er, I meant that at one point in time, you were something else to me too, you know?”

  
  


To say that Sasuke’s heart didn’t droop ever so slightly at the mention of Hinata would be a complete lie, a blasphemous trick of the tongue even for someone like him. Instead of dwelling on it, however, he decided to let Naruto continue rambling and processing whatever it was that needed to be said. Sasuke couldn’t even remember if he had ever actually talked to Hinata - were they the heiress or that other dude, he wondered. No, the guy was named Yeti. Or maybe it was Leggy, but that didn’t seem right either. Neddy, Sasuke thought all of a sudden; Neddy had to be it.

  
  


“When I see you take on stuff and get all messed up, it hurts me. It hurts so much inside that I can’t just leave it alone. Right now, I’m in a ton of pain everywhere, inside and out,” Naruto said, laughing quietly. Sasuke didn’t share in his amusement. “Anyways, what I’m trying to say is that-”

  
  


No, Sasuke wanted to scream. He wanted to plug his ears, but didn’t even have the necessary appendages to do so at the moment. Sasuke needed Naruto to _stop_ , to not vocalize or shine even a glimmer of hope down unto those things which Sasuke fought tooth and nail to bury inside of him. Already, though, he could feel it begin to resurface. Damn it, he thought, that asshole needs to shut up.

  
  


“Naruto-”

  
  


“-I loved you, Sasuke.” 

  
  


Strange as it was, he was still utterly flabbergasted to hear the words spoken so plainly, despite anticipating them. Like some lovestruck school girl, Sasuke’s eyes widened and his breath caught in his throat when he heard Naruto’s admission. The dobe...actually loved him? That couldn’t be, he thought, now that it was out in the open. Sure, the idea - the fantasy - was well cemented in his mind, but Sasuke never imagined that it could literally be true. No one could love someone wretched like him. 

  
  


“I loved you in _every_ sense of the word. I couldn’t accept it when you said that you hated me, couldn’t understand it, couldn’t bear the thought. All else aside, a part of me just wanted to know why you never...why you didn’t love me back, or show that you did.”

  
  


Thinking back to the childhood they’d shared, Sasuke pretended to examine his own emotions before deciding on a response. When they first met, he _thought_ he’d hated Naruto: the way he talked, his stupid yellow hair and bright clothing, his big goofy smile. He hated the way he was always kind of right about stuff, and how Naruto seemed to read his mind. He hated when he tried to make him laugh, because he’d always wanted to laugh, and never allowed himself to. But most of all, Sasuke hated that he _didn’t_ hate Naruto. He never had. Not even close, not even a little bit. Not even at all. 

  
  


Indeed, hate was so the opposite of what he felt for Naruto that it was intellectually dishonest and perhaps downright immoral to even consider equating the two concepts. As a child he’d watched Naruto’s eyes light up with smiles, the blue spilling forth and sweeping Sasuke away in a river of light and goodness during bad times. Yes, everything Sasuke _did_ know about love, he had first learned from Naruto, watching as the blonde’s soul grew like a rose and made it past all of the thorns in its way - several of which Sasuke had planted himself - so that he could remain in the sunshine. 

  
  


“You’re my _everything_ ,” Sasuke said, but the words never made it out of his head, his vocal cords not receiving any real orders to produce the sound. So instead Sasuke said that Naruto was like a brother to him, dying on the inside as the ridiculous statement left his mouth. Which was really saying something, because Sasuke was sure that anything living within him had died off long ago.

  
  


Naruto let out a heavy sigh, shifting his gaze back towards the sky. “I was always jealous of you, you know.”

  
  


A small part of Sasuke was embittered by Naruto’s quick acceptance, about his lack of protest regarding their ‘bro’ status. He promptly squashed it out, reminding himself that he ought to be grateful, because the non-resistance would make the inevitable easier whenever it came to pass.

  
  


“No. It was the opposite. I was jealous of _you_ , Naruto,” Sasuke admitted.

  
  


They continued to reminisce, and eventually Sasuke found himself to be - somehow - watching Naruto’s memories from throughout the years, like he was inside of Naruto’s head. From their early days at the academy, to the chunin exams, and up until his own brother, Itachi, had entrusted Naruto with taking care of him, Sasuke watched their lives from his sun’s perspective. It was overwhelming, and at some point he began to weep.

  
  


_“Remember, becoming Hokage isn’t about being acknowledged - only those already acknowledged can become Hokage. Never forget your friends.”_

  
  


Images of Naruto, Kakashi, Sakura, their classmates, and even ‘Neddy’, flashed through Sasuke’s borrowed headspace. They were all his friends, and they had all been waiting for him to come back to them, to remember; the entire village, everyone he had known and pushed away. Sasuke pictured himself now, standing alongside them to face the future. To face whatever would come next, after Kaguya. And without a flicker of surprise, Sasuke saw just how out of place he seemed within the portrait. He clashed with the others like an ugly stain on a hand-made tomesode, offensive and audacious in his brash display of attempting to belong. 

  
  


It was foolish, all of it, and especially their forgiveness of him. Maybe they thought forgiveness would help him or something, but it was doing the opposite; pouring oil onto the flames of self hatred that had burned in the core of his being like an ancient coal-fire, ever since he was a child. Ever since that fateful night just three days ahead of his eighth birthday. 

  
  


Before they knew any time had passed, both men were opening their eyes for the second time, greeted by the gentle caresses of the morning star as it rose above the valley and shined its light down around them. 

  
  


“Where are we?” Naruto asked. 

  
  


“It looks like we fell asleep, and slept the whole night through. We didn’t die after all,” Sasuke said. 

  
  


He didn’t bother trying to hide his disappointment regarding that fact. Nor did he bother asking Naruto how the hell he could possibly forget a place like this - the Valley of the End, where they had fought seriously for the first time. Where Sasuke had knelt over Naruto’s unconscious form, terrified that he’d killed him. His teenage hormones had screamed at him to kiss the idiot, to just give up and stop fighting the only good that might ever come his way.

  
  


Instead, Sasuke had left, closing the doorway to that reality forever. 

  
  


After twitching violently for several moments like a bug with a broken wing, Naruto groaned in frustration, trying and failing to move around. “Dammit. I wanted to hit you again. To open your eyes for real!”

  
  


In a rare moment of uninhibited emotion - or maybe hysteria - that startled them both, Sasuke let loose a bout of genuine laughter; it was so jarring for Naruto to witness, that it just ended up agitating him further. Sasuke decided that he might as well ride the wave, manic or not - it might be the last time he ever felt the pleasure of mirth. The last time he felt anything, period. 

  
  


“What's so funny, tough guy?”

  
  


“God, you fucking spazzo - we’re all messed up, and you _still_ want to fight,” Sasuke replied. 

  
  


“Damn right, whatever it takes!”

  
  


“Calm down, Usuratonkachi. I admit it.” Sasuke’s laughter stopped, and a smile spread out across his face in its stead. “I’ve lost.” 

  
  


The words and the smile felt alien, almost like someone else was forming them. But it was a genuine expression from the little bit left of ‘Sasuke’, and he wouldn’t deprive Naruto of experiencing it. He’d taken so much from Naruto over the years, and unfortunately wasn’t done just yet. But it was necessary to maintain this distance, because Sasuke knew that if he wasn’t careful he would end up melting in Naruto’s arms, and he wouldn’t ever be able to leave if that happened.

  
  


It was a truth that cut, not through one of them but through both, and would cut even deeper if he held on instead of letting go. 

  
  


“You fucking idiot!” Naruto snapped. “This isn’t about winning or losing. It's about getting my wemo friend to pull his head out of his ass!”

  
  


“What the fuck does ‘wemo’ mean?”

  
  


“It means that you’re a _wannabe_ emo. Because you think you’re alone, but you’re not.” 

  
  


Sasuke tried his best not to feel insulted. He’d put a lot of work into his ‘emo’ aesthetic, but alas it was time to join his older brother - to evolve, and become a goth. He knew that he wasn’t alone. That was actually part of the problem: he _needed_ to be alone. Wanted to be alone. Loneliness was all that he knew, and all that he deserved. Sasuke had to try one more time to shake Naruto off. 

  
  


“Hey, Naruto.”

  
  


“What?”

  
  


“You know, I just acknowledged you. If I die here, the long cycle of destiny that Hagoromo mentioned might end. That’s a kind of revolution, too. Have Madara release the Infinite Tsukuyomi once I’m dead. And I….I will just put an end to myself.” 

  
  


“No way. If you’re willing to die, then live and help me instead. Also, someone already ended the infinite Tsukuyomi. How else would it have been nighttime? Dumbass...besides, our revolution isn’t over until we change the villages’ ways. Remember what we talked about, back in Kaguya’s dying mansion?” 

  
  


Sasuke shot Naruto a quizzical look. “Her...what? You mean her _dimension_?” he scoffed.

  
  


He could have been a bit easier on the dolt. After all, they’d both lost a _lot_ of blood.

  
  


“Er, yeah, whatever. But we have to fix things: strengthen the alliance, reform our wills, our Ninshu even, and get all shinobi to cooperate - and that definitely includes you. I need you, Sasuke.” 

  
  


Those words twisted in his heart like a knife, and Sasuke pleaded for the pain to just turn into spite, into anything he could use to his advantage.

  
  


“Yeah, well there’s no guarantee that everyone will go along with it, no matter how badly you want them to. And what if I oppose you again?”

  
  


“Sasuke, are you fucking kidding me? Stop whining! You sound like a cordless vacuum.”

  
  


“There are cordless vacuums? Wait, since when do you clean shit, anyways?”

  
  


“I’m very clean, which you would know if you hadn’t fucked off for so long. And yeah, we have _cordless motherfucking vacuums_ now. Imagine what we will have in, like, ten years! There could be wireless puppets, too, or wireless...uh...wired devices! Which you’re gonna miss out on if you’re dead.” 

  
  


“Tch. Efficient house cleaning isn’t exactly a compelling reason to continue living.”

  
  


“Whatever, man. If you do go against me I’ll just stop you again, but I know you won’t do that anymore.”

  
  


Narrowing his eyes as he peered at his friend, Sasuke felt another unwelcome flutter in his abdomen. “How can you be sure?”

  
  


“Do I really need to say it again? You were always so dense,” Naruto sighed. 

  
  


For some reason, this was the response that finally blew down the house of cards. Before Naruto could continue, a choked sob made its way out of Sasuke’s throat, derailing Naruto’s train of thought. Tears of sorrow and distress began to pour down Sasuke’s face, and Naruto wished for nothing more than to be able to hold him against his chest and comfort him in that moment. Sasuke, on the other hand, was fighting the urge not to roll himself over like an ear of corn, then onward towards the end of the cliff, and to keep rolling until he flopped over the edge. 

  
  


“Sasuke, what is it?”

  
  


The broken man sniffled, his chest heaving with ragged breaths as he tried to collect himself. He was so humiliated, and furious at being betrayed by his own tongue, unable to hold closed the floodgates of confession. “Why...does this keep happening?”

  
  


“What do you mean, what’s happening?” 

  
  


“It hurts _so much_ , Naruto. Most of the time I don’t really feel anything, but then...then it all hits me at once. Like a punch to the gut. I can’t control it, avoid it, or make it stop. All the pain from everything that has happened, it all comes flooding back. I’m reliving it, I’m constantly on edge, paranoid. I just want relief. I don’t want to feel like this anymore.”

  
  


“Sasuke...when we get back, I think you should, you know, get help. Not because there’s something wrong with you, that isn’t what I mean - but your trauma, all the things you’ve suppressed...it isn’t healthy. I think if you talked to someone about it, like a professional, it would be really beneficial for you. Maybe even Sakura could help, if you don’t feel comfortable with a stranger.” 

  
  


Mulling over the idea in his head, Sasuke couldn’t help but agree. Perhaps in another life he could actually accept and follow through with the offer. 

  
  


But what if he _did_ just...give in? Was it worth a shot? He wasn’t so sure, and thinking about Sakura filled him with guilt once again. 

  
  


“Naruto, what about us?” He blurted, internally screeching at himself for doing so.

  
  


“Huh?” 

  
  


“I mean, you’re with Hinata now, right?”

  
  


Sasuke no longer had the energy to fight against the conversation he apparently wanted to have. It was already out of the bag, best to sit back and wait for natural selection to take care of the cat.

  
  


“Oh. Uh, yeah. Look, Sasuke...you were my first love. Like, in _that_ way, you know? And maybe I still do love you like that. Maybe if things had gone differently, then…”

  
  


“Yeah…”

  
  


“...but that isn’t how things went. And I’m happy with the way things are right now; I don’t know if I want it to change. I still love you, but I’m _in_ love with Hinata now. I think. That’s the first time I’ve admitted it out loud, to be honest.”

  
  


Sasuke chuckled, hoping that Naruto somehow missed the putrid bitterness saturating the noise. “I understand. I also didn’t technically say that I wanted to take her place or anything, by the way. Tch.” 

  
  


“Look...I’m not gonna speak for you, or force it out of you, but I will say that you’re not fooling this guy. Sorry, ‘Sas. I sure hope it doesn’t affect the future of your clan.”

  
  


They both snorted in laughter while imagining the same preposterous image of Sasuke trying to rebuild his clan by himself, which left the question of just who Sasuke could become involved with if he were to decide on taking that step. He may have been popular with the girls while they were at the academy, but his reputation was not quite the same nowadays. If he’d been a cinnamon roll back then, he was now a poisonous mushroom growing on the back of some old woman’s corpse. 

  
  


Naruto seemed to be thinking in step with him. “You know, Sasuke, there is one person who might-”

  
  


At the mention of the devil, a furious shriek cut Naruto off mid-sentence, and a flash of pink hair danced at the top of the ridge before descending upon the two men. Kakashi, who was right behind the pinkette, stayed perched high on the cliff, allowing his three students a moment to themselves. 

  
  


“Naruto! Sasuke!” 

  
  


She landed in between the recent amputees, assessing their wounds and beginning the healing process without comment; Sakura’s face was uncharacteristically stoic while she tended to the injuries. 

  
  


“Thank you, Sakura,” Naruto said, breathing a sigh of relief. 

  
  


His tears had finally dried, but Sasuke’s guilt still remained as it always had and always would; there was so much he wanted to say to her; so much he _needed_ to say. “Sakura, I’m-”

  
  


“Shut up. I need to focus so I can heal you guys.” 

  
  


“I’m sorry.” 

  
  


Sakura flinched. “Sorry? For what?”

  
  


“For...everything,” Sasuke whispered. “I’m so sorry, Sakura.”

  
  


Her composed exterior shattered, and Sakura’s shoulders began to shake as tears threatened to spill beyond her lower eyelids. “You’d better be,” she said, her voice straining to stay even. “It’s about damn time, you idiot!” 

  
  


Rubbing his sore neck with his remaining arm, Sasuke sat up alongside Naruto, who tried to comfort their now-sobbing teammate. Sasuke watched them interact, noticing the tenderness and compassion that Naruto displayed for the woman, and wished that he’d gotten the chance to learn how to treat others with a similar level of empathy.

  
  


Just as he had felt the pain of his father, mother, and Itachi, Sasuke chose to feel Naturo’s pain as well, and to bear it with him from there until his bitter end. Which would hopefully be soon, so that he could take Naruto’s pain with him when he left. Then, thinking of his elder brother’s last words to him, he decided that the same would apply to his friends, even in death. Confirming the decision in his head, he looked over to Naruto, the one he would do it for, the one who was….

  
  


His everything.

  
  


**_“No matter what happens to you from here on out...I will always love you.”_ **

* * *


	4. Two

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Songs for this chapter: Butterfly Fly Away by Miley Cyrus(one word- Obito), listen before i go by Billie Eilish, and Shelter by Dermot Kennedy(major feels)

**Two - Listen Before I Go**

**November 5th - Konohagakure**

**8:23 A.M.**

_“You pulled me out, turned on the lights_

_Used your tree to give me life_

_Little boys depend on things like that.”_

Madara groaned, covering his ears. For almost thirty days he had suffered this torture, and found himself wading on the fringes of insanity. He was adrift in the ocean of madness, helpless while he gazed at the peace and quiet of the distant and mentally-sound shoreline. A moronic and unfortunately sentient waste of food, water, and oxygen clung to Madara’s side, singing while it stroked his long hair.

_“Fixed my leg and combed my hair_

_Saved my arm from disrepair_

_You were always there when I looked back_

_You had to do it all alone_

_Found the cave, and made a home_

_Must have been as hard as it could be_

_And when I couldn't sleep at night_

_Scared things wouldn't turn out right_

_You would squeeze my neck and threaten me-”_

From the corner of the concrete cell, Sasuke curled further into himself, praying that the clutches of sleep would spare him from the rest of the unsolicited performance. Somehow, despite what their local musician had tried to convince him of, he doubted that the eldest Uchiha had ever sang anything to anyone during either of his lives.

_“Sacrifice to the God-tree, that is all you'll ever be_

_You can try but they won’t hear you scream_

_Wish you may and wish you might_

_Quit your crying, close your eyes_

_I promise you will get to dream someday_

_Endless Tsuki-no-Me.”_

_“Obito, shut the fuck up!”_ Madara roared, pushing the man off of him with a hard shove. Sprawled out across the floor, Obito erupted into laughter, pointing a finger at Madara’s face. 

  
  


“You should see the look on your face right now, ‘dara,” he wheezed. 

  
  


“What? You can’t even see my face, you blind piece of shit!”

  
  


In truth, Madara couldn’t see Obito’s face either, as they were _both_ blind. After ending the Infinite Tsukuyomi they had been apprehended - peacefully turned themselves in, rather - by the Allied Shinobi Forces. Konohagakure accepted responsibility for their justice and punishment, and so they sat along with Sasuke in this prison cell underneath the Hokage tower, while awaiting the end of their trial. However, in exchange for their lives, Madara and Obito had to agree to forfeit their eyes. Still surprising to them both, they’d conceded to this term, and presumably the pair of rinnegan were destroyed. 

  
  


Deep down, a small part of Madara had been relieved at the prospect of relinquishing his dojutsu; in a way, losing his eyes lifted a weight from his shoulders. The weight of a world he had previously felt obliged to save and wholly responsible for, due in part to his immense power; but now, such a thing was simply...not his problem. 

  
  


Obito on the other hand was a basket case in general, so there was no telling why he’d agreed to those terms - beyond the opportunity to give his other sharingan to Kakashi as some weird, masochistic offering. Naruto had promised to restore their normal eyesight at some point, but that would come _after_ the trial, and would also depend on its outcome. 

  
  


“Shame. I have such a pretty face. Don’t I, Sasuke-chan?” Obito purred, batting his eyelashes at the man in question - a horrifying display of fluttering, empty eye sockets. 

  
  


“You’re as pretty as sun-dried turd, Toe,” Sasuke droned, using the rude nickname he had come up with during their first week of imprisonment. 

  
  


“Ah, you could say that again,” a fourth person spoke from outside of the cage. 

  
  


All three of their heads snapped towards the sound of the new voice; it was rare to have a visitor other than the guards who brought them sustenance. Or occasionally, Sakura. Standing on the other side of the bars were two men: Iruka Umino and the newly-appointed Rokudaime Hokage, Kakashi Hatake.

  
  


“Sasuke, Obito, Madara - the trial has ended,” Kakashi said. He sat down cross-legged in front of them, settling his elbows onto his knees and clasping his hands together so he could prop up his chin.

  
  


“Let’s have a talk...about the future of the Uchiha clan.”

* * *

  
  


**9:05 A.M.**

  
  


Sasuke was relieved to finally be released from that god-forsaken cell, but at the same time he was extremely anxious, because now he had to face the real world and the consequences of his actions. They may have been pardoned due to their aid in ending the war - despite two Uchiha in particular being the _instigators_ of said war - but his peers wouldn’t soon forget what had transpired. By the end of the war thirty-two thousand shinobi had lost their lives, nearly half of the entire Allied Forces. They not only had to live with the burden of that sin, but had to navigate this new lease on life as the only remaining members of the Uchiha clan, a clan which didn’t have a pristine reputation to begin with. Sasuke was having trouble processing these changes, nevermind living with them, and was not keen to find out what was left of his human side.

  
  


If there _was_ anything left, he thought.

  
  


Madara and Obito had been put on nine months of house arrest - which Sasuke couldn’t help think was a subtle innuendo on Kakashi’s part - that would be followed by a lifetime of parole. At least they were blind for the moment, which would make babysitting the pair less of a hassle. However, Sasuke had no idea where they were all going to live. The Uchiha district was long gone and he was too broke to afford the rent prices in the village, let alone purchase a home. More problems presented themselves with each passing moment, it seemed; all of which were issues that Kakashi failed to address during their discussion about ‘the future of the Uchiha clan’, though that wasn’t unexpected. 

  
  


Problems. There were always more of them, nothing was ever truly solved, was it? He asked himself.

  
  


The three men were led out of the Hokage tower by Kakashi and Iruka, walking in a single-file line like a gaggle of toddlers, and even holding hands so that the two blind fools didn’t get lost. Well, in Sasuke’s case, only his sleeve was being held onto, since his left arm had joined the rest of the Uchiha in taking a dirt nap. Missing an arm wasn’t so bad, if he was honest. Although, using the bathroom had been a nightmare at first, especially since Obito felt personally obligated to make an announcement every time Sasuke decided to ‘commune with nature’ - one of the more polite terms Obito had used. 

  
  


Stepping out into the courtyard was like trying to read Naruto’s handwriting - it was deeply unsettling, and made him squint. Once Sasuke’s eyes adjusted to the sunlight, he was greeted by the sight of the noisy ninja himself bounding over to him, with Sakura, Hinata, and Eddy - Neddy? - trailing behind at the pace of normal, sane individuals. Sasuke had been so absorbed by his worries that he almost forgot to put on his calm, cool exterior; something that was particularly difficult to do on that day. Correcting this negligent error, Sasuke tilted his chin upwards and formed what he hoped was a neutral but not dead-inside expression, while combing through his dark hair with one hand for added normalcy.

  
  


“Sasuke! You...look like hell, but it's good to finally see you,” Naruto said, grinning and subtly flexing his new right-arm.

  
  


“Tch. You look like an asshole. Nice arm,” Sasuke replied, gesturing towards the bandaged appendage. He cringed at the flatness and insincerity in his tone, which Sakura seemed to notice too, given the odd look that flashed across her face.

  
  


“You think? Lady Tsunade has a transplant waiting for you, too, if you-”

  
  


“Excuse me,” Madara said, interrupting the two men and turning his blind-folded face - done to hide his gaping eye sockets, not his gaze - towards Kakashi. “Uzumaki, I believe you owe me a set of eyeballs. Not to be rude, but Sasuke still has one arm, whereas I have zero eyes, so I feel that my transplant should be of a higher priority.” 

  
  


Kakashi sighed. “Thank you for your input, Madara, but I’m not the one you should be asking. It wouldn’t hurt to be a bit more polite, either.”

  
  


“Damn it. You see, this is why I need to see!” Madara exclaimed. “Can’t even have a proper conversation.” 

  
  


“It isn’t like you could before,” Obito muttered.

  
  


Naruto’s shoulders sagged in exasperation when he addressed the haughty Uchiha, grateful that Obito at least seemed to have a firm grasp of his ‘place’, if his uncharacteristic silence was any indication. “Listen. My offer still stands, but at the moment we really need to focus on getting you all settled in. _Then_ I will address your plight-of-sight. Deal?”

  
  


“Hmph.” Madara folded his arms over his chest and ‘looked’ towards the blonde; this time he’d missed by a narrower margin, and managed to aim his frown at the space between Naruto and Hinata. “Fine. I’ll award you a brownie point for that rhyme as well.”

  
  


During their brief exchange, Sasuke had once again zoned out and was staring listlessly at the cobbled stone covering the ground of the plaza, enraptured by the rocks, which were laid in a _Same Komon_ pattern: a design of overlapping arcs resembling shark skin. This first reminded him of Suigetsu, then of Kisame Hoshigaki - Itachi’s partner - and finally of his brother, Itachi. A strange emotion settled in the pit of Sasuke’s stomach, something he couldn’t identify on its own, but felt an awful lot like melancholia. 

  
  


He was granted a brief respite from the haze when Hinata boldly shoved past Naruto and grabbed his uncle by the collar. It wasn’t like Sasuke had paid much attention to or gotten to know the girl before, but he did have a distinct memory of her being unbearably meek - definitely not someone with big enough balls to physically accost Madara Uchiha, even if he _was_ blinded.

“I’m going to say this once and only once since apparently nobody else will. You’re a felon. Your red-eyes-black-dragon bullshit is gone. You are nothing but a name, Madara, so you’d do well to remember your place and show some gratitude to the people who have not only forgiven you, but are also offering you a second chance. They spared you out of compassion, not desire - don’t forget that,” Hinata said, speaking with a quiet but terrifying fury. 

The seven seeing-members of the group stared at Hinata in bewilderment, with a few nodding in agreement, including the Hokage. They still were not accustomed to the confident personality she’d displayed ever since Pain’s assault. Hinata smiled and let go of Madara’s shirt before falling back to her position next to Naruto, patting him on the arm with one hand. Sasuke was mildly concerned for his friend, who had a tendency to incur the wrath of most women. Madara stood with his mouth pressed in a thin line and did not say a single word in response to the admonishment. 

“Well, anyways,” Kakashi finally spoke up, “I’m looking for a volunteer to shelter these three until I can arrange for more permanent accommodations.”

Neji was quick to tell him that the Hyuga could not host outsiders at the time, as their spare room was already occupied. Not that anyone expected them to consider it to begin with. 

“I’d love to have you guys crash at my place, but uh, my bedroom is my living room and there’s only one couch,” Naruto said, laughing nervously. 

“It really is a shit hole,” Hinata muttered. 

“What?! Hinata, I thought you said it was ‘homely’,” Naruto whispered indiscreetly, frowning. 

“Yes, but there are two very different definitions of the word.” 

Sakura glanced at Kakashi before making eye-contact with Sasuke. “Um, my parents moved out a few days ago, so right now it’s just me in their townhouse. There are only three bedrooms, but if two of you don’t mind sharing a bed, then I would be happy for you to stay with me,” Sakura said, surprising everyone. “Temporarily, of course,” she added.

When neither Madara nor Obito responded, Sasuke remembered that it was his responsibility to answer the question. 

“Thank you, Sakura,” he said, bowing his head. 

“You can thank me by helping out with the chores,” Sakura quipped. 

She was only teasing, but Sasuke felt guilty nonetheless. Like a leech fat with blood, taking and taking and taking without offering anything in return. A parasite, a nuisance, a burden that Sakura didn’t deserve, for he had already taken too much from her. To take any more would be despicable. 

The group said their good-byes, with Naruto promising to come over for breakfast within the hour. Sakura led the three Uchihas through the bustling village that was now near-completely rebuilt, making light conversation by explaining that her parents had decided to retire in Yugakure and had left their home to her. She had plans to eventually sell the residence, but not for another year or so, until the political climate and her ‘professional life’ were sorted out. Sasuke had a mind to ask what she meant by the latter statement, but before he could she was stopping them in front of a small red door and jamming a key into its lock. 

  
  


“Welcome to my humble abode,” Sakura said, leading them inside.

  
  


Stepping into a living room that immediately succeeded the minuscule entryway, the three men found themselves standing inside a home that, while not lavish, clearly belonged to a very well-to-do family. The polished cherry-wood floors complemented the light, olive green wall paint, and a set of traditional but stylish lounge furniture rested on top of an area rug that was, unsurprisingly, embroidered with large cherry blossoms. A cut-out in the far wall provided a glimpse of the small kitchen outfitted with modern appliances, and an archway to the right of said kitchen that lead into a well-decorated dining area.

  
  


“My parents were wealthy merchants - well, I suppose they still are, since their retirement is only in name, not literal. They co-own a shipping company with the Owari clan. A civilian clan, so you probably haven’t heard of them. It operates out of Minato-ku, the only port in the Land of Fire. Though I suspect that will change soon,” Sakura explained, sensing the bemusement of her guests.

  
  


“I see,” Sasuke said. Somehow the flat effect had gotten worse, but thankfully no one commented on it.

  
  


In that moment Sasuke became painfully aware of just how little he actually knew about Sakura. Even before he left the village, he’d never bothered to ask about her life or get to know her on the level that teammates ought to know one another on. He wondered if this was all information that Naruto was privy to, a thought that saddened him and made him feel even more guilty for treating his former teammate like some nameless individual in a crowd, rather than an actual human being with unique individual experiences. At least with Naruto he’d had the excuse of the blonde not having a family in the first place. It crossed Sasuke’s mind to rectify the situation, although for some reason it felt like an impermanent conviction. Some part of his subconscious reminded him that he wouldn’t have the time nor the chance. 

  
  


Foolish, he thought. Penance was impossible for someone like him. No amount of punishment could ever be enough. 

  
  
  


When he drifted back into reality, Sakura had left him standing in the foyer and was heading for the kitchen with Madara and Obito on her heels like starving puppies. She asked them if they were in the mood for gohan or okayu, and what kinds of vegetables and fish they preferred. Oh, and she could also make Miso Shiru if they wanted, or natto, or both. Okayu, a simple rice porridge, was Sasuke’s favorite and something he had not eaten since-

  
  


_Somebody was inside. Terror gripped his mind, bleeding into every fiber of his being. His heart was racing, beating painfully fast. He was going to die. He was- he was….he had to open the doors. Move. Move._ **_Move_ ** _-_

  
  


“Sasuke! Earth to Sasuke,” Sakura called out to him, peeking through the wall opening with a pleasant grin shaping her features. “Come here and help us decide what to make.” 

  
  


Sasuke walked over to join them, suppressing the shudder passing through him, and each step felt as if he were dragging his limbs through thick, dark mud. They were so heavy, his legs, it was so hard to move. And cold. It was not even ten meters to reach the kitchen, and yet Sasuke feared he might become lost on his way there. Perhaps he was lost before the journey began. He stood at the edge of the room like a lame duck while Sakura flitted about, pulling out a large _donabe_ covered in blue leaf designs and handing it to Obito. She instructed him to add one-hundred grams of rice to the pot and begin rinsing off the grains, all of which Obito apparently knew how to do _without being able to see_. Madara was not so skilled, and smacked into the fridge after mistaking it for Obito.

  
  


It was funny. He should have laughed; they were an interesting pair, that’s for sure. Every time that Sakura had visited them in their cell, Obito was able to keep her laughing for the duration of her visit. Her eyes would scrunch up with joy, soft cheeks glowing with mirth and the sound - her laugh - was like festival music, bright and cheery and imbued with the desire to live and experience and _to live and live and live_ , illuminating the dark pocket of their world if only for a moment. 

  
  


“Sakura,” Sasuke suddenly spoke. 

  
  


“Hmm?” she responded, her back turned to him while she reached into a cabinet. 

  
  


“Where is your…”

  
  


Was he too embarrassed to say the word? Had such a simple, natural thing become so harrowing as to be unspeakable? Was anything ever easy?

  
  


‘Ah, just up the stairs, the second door on the right.” 

  
  


“Thank you,” Sasuke muttered, missing Sakura’s concerned side-glance when he turned to leave.

  
  


He slogged through the thick layers of reality for what felt like hours, dragging his feet, unable to move them along any faster. At first each step was excruciating, but not long after he’d begun it faded into a comforting numbness, a welcome respite. 

For a moment, he closed his eyes and took a deep breath, trying to force a peace that he didn’t feel. All of a sudden, moving on felt so incredibly difficult. He not only had to let go of the past, but also the future that wished to spend with the sun. With Naruto, the only reason Sasuke had fallen in love with sleep; while asleep, he could escape to a dreamworld in which they were together. No matter how many years went by, his heart was - and would remain forever - Naruto’s. Because when he said that Naruto was everything to him, he meant _everything_.

But he _had_ to let go, and to let go of the illusion that it could have been any different.

When he reached the top of the stairs he could see into the first bedroom, the door having been left wide open. With a cursory once-over he noted that it must have been Sakura’s bedroom, based off of the decor. Noticing a framed photo set on the bedside table, Sasuke’s curiosity got the better of him, and he stepped inside. Upon closer inspection, it was not just any framed picture, but a photo that had been taken of their genin team - Kakashi had a hand in his and Naruto’s hair, who were standing on either side of Sakura and glaring at each other. Sakura herself was grinning sweetly, holding up her fists in some girlish expression of joy. As he continued to stare the picture began to move, and he could see Kakashi’s eyes crinkle, Sakura’s shoulder vibrate with giggles, Naruto’s chest puff out, and his own eyes twitching in irritation. 

  
  


They all looked so young and...innocent. This world was so _wrong_. 

  
  


A ceramic vase sat next to the picture frame, populated by three tulips so rich in color - a beautiful red-orange - that they hurt him. It was so quiet, Sasuke thought he could hear them breathe. 

  
  


“Come here,” they giggled. “Look out our window.”

“No.” They are too excitable, he thought. 

  
  


“The light lies on these white walls, this bed, your hands,” they said. 

“ _T_ _hese_ hands. I am learning to be peaceful.”

His words caused them to laugh again, taunting this time. “If you won’t spring forth then stop taking our oxygen,” they accused, their tone mutating into a sinister, mocking facade. “Please, you are stealing it. _You coward! Bastard! Why won’t you leave? Be gone, thief!_ ” 

“I am nobody; I have nothing to do with explosions,” Sasuke replied.

  
  


He did not want tulips, he wanted to lie with his palms turned towards the sky in someplace where he wouldn’t be watched. The tulips turned to the window and then to him, mocking in their vibrancy, and he in turn turned away, his line of sight trailing lazily behind the quick movement of his head. 

Leaned against the wall and previously hidden by the door, he spotted a sword nesting in its sheath. 

  
  


Sakura did not fight with a sword. Oh, Sasuke thought once he remembered: he had given his own sword to her for safe keeping upon their return to the village. Obviously such a weapon, or any weapon, was not permitted to enter a jail cell with three former missing-nin. It was the Kusanagi-no-tsurugi, which had nearly been destroyed during the battle with Kaguya. But alas, there it sat before him in all of its tempting devilry. His fingers curled around the leather sheath, the strap lifting up and over his head before settling around his chest, and he shifted the sword to the back of his hip where it was more comfortable. Where it belonged. 

  
  


Hopefully Naruto still had his hitai-ate. Unfortunately Sasuke did not have anything to give to Kakashi; there was no time left to do so anyways. This was his chance; a chance he hadn’t expected to come so early or by such incredible luck, but one he couldn’t refuse. Sakura could, of course, keep his sword if she wanted to. 

  
  


Acting upon the inkling that he shouldn’t pry further into her personal space - and shouldn’t have in the first place - Sasuke exited the bedroom and found the next door on that rightmost wall, leading him into the bathroom that was his original destination. He locked the door behind him.

  
  


In the confines of the bathroom walls Sasuke felt scattered; he was a cloud, weightless and floating on the wind as it slowly dissipated. He lifted his head and the man in the wall blinked at him. Life was meaningless, the other man said. 

“Who are you?”

_Who are you_ _?_

“Who am I?” 

Sasuke’s head hurt. It had not stopped hurting since it first began to ache that previous November. Had it really been almost a year? he wondered. His head was ringing, louder and louder with each passing moment, drowning out the rest of the world. The man continued to stare at him, expression blank, eyes dead and reeking of desolation: their gaze was utterly empty, and so devoid of _anything and everything_ that it was hard to believe the man had ever existed in the first place. Did he exist? Sasuke questioned. Maybe he didn’t. He had no place here, and he never would. They all had their own lives to live and would move on, forget. 

People always forget. They always leave, just like he did. He left. Now, he’d returned, but he does not belong, does not fit into the bigger picture. Or any picture. Sasuke knew that this made him sad but he felt no sadness, no sorrow. 

Often when he was younger, there were times that Sasuke wished to feel nothing at all. But oh, how he knew now, that feeling nothing was so much worse than any other sensation. For what is left of a person, when they no longer feel, when they stop loving the things they love? He wasn’t happy, or sad, or angry, or neutral, or indifferent, he was nothing. His mind was spinning, but he couldn’t feel anything.

The sound of the glass shattering startled him, and he was surprised when he found that his own bloodied fist was behind the destruction. He was just a spectator inside of his own body, an empty shell of a human being, devoid of all qualities that constituted ‘being’. Bits of glass stuck out of the skin in some areas, and in others the white bones of his knuckles were visible instead. Self sacrifice, _that_ is a true shinobi, he remembered Itachi saying.

  
  


Sasuke couldn’t fathom Itachi’s suffering, or how he had lived with it for so long, if he had truly lived at all.

  
  


“We do not know what kind of people we truly are until the moment before our deaths,” the man spoke between the cracks, repeating Itachi’s words to him.

  
  


Who was Itachi, in the end? Sasuke had forgotten to ask his brother. Should he risk eternity in hell for another chance to find out? Who was Sasuke?

  
  


Sasuke Uchiha. He was alone. He was a traitor and a murderer. He was Nineteen years old. He had been made a monster. He was arrogant, and always thought that he knew better. He was the moon: he could not produce his own light, but merely reflected that of the sun. He was chained to the sun and reliant on it. He was so in love that it drove him insane. 

That was Sasuke Uchiha, the one who currently stood in the bathroom. He shouldn’t be this kind of tired at his age, and yet a persistent weariness had turned his bones to lead. He didn’t want to die like this, Sasuke thought, but he couldn’t picture his life like _this_ , there where he should not be; would they be lost without him?

  
  


No. They were without him for years and turned out fine - much better than himself, in fact. 

  
  


Making up his mind, Sasuke looked at the wall and what was left of the man trapped inside of it. This simple act of experiencing knocked the wind out of his chest and he doubled over, an endless scream erupting without any sound, the kind of agony that did not need vocalization, only to mime it. He recovered a moment later and stood straight once again, limbs aching and electrified by anxiety. 

As it turns out, no matter how badly someone wishes to die, the intense and primal fear of the unknown _always_ presents itself in those final, critical moments, fleeting as it may be. 

The man was crying, silent tears rolled from his crimson eyes down his pale cheeks and gathered at the corners of his lips. They tasted like salt. Like the ocean he had seen when visiting his mother’s family as a child. He wondered if they knew he was still alive, if they knew anything, or if they cared. Will they miss him, will they weep for him, will they give enough of a shit to know anything is missing at all? Didn’t orphans live with their grandmothers? He did not even know the name of his grandmother, nor could he picture her face. Not that it mattered anymore. 

  
  


“I’m sorry,” they both spoke in unison, a soft murmur of true sincerity, and the last. 

  
  


Reaching for their sword, they gripped the handle and released it from its cage upon the hip. The metal glinted in the light, brilliant and shining with a kind of value that both men felt they thoroughly lacked. Somewhere on the outside, in the vivacious reality where everyone else lived, there was a familiar voice and the thudding of contented footsteps. It sounded far away, underwater even; they did not pay the intrusion any mind. 

  
  


Meeting eyes in the shattered remains of the mirror, they took a breath. The man’s eyes reflected the same resolve Sasuke felt, and a twinge of regret that had somehow wedged its way past the abyssal _lack_ of anything. 

  
  


He raised his sword.

_Down. Twist. Right. Release._

There was clarity within the pain that followed, a welcome feeling after such persistent numbness, and when the air was forced out of his lungs with a quiet gasp Sasuke finally recognized the man in the mirror as himself. He saw who he was. The truth. 

He was twelve years old again, swearing to himself that he would never love anything or fall in love with anyone, especially not his annoying blonde teammate. But there they were, on a mission gone wrong, a tragic misjudgment that was about to get Naruto killed, and his body just moved on its own. He’d glanced back at the shock and reverence on the other boy's face without feeling even an ounce of regret, and that was the moment Sasuke knew he was screwed. 

Everything. For him, he would do anything, he would even live- 

When his back stopped supporting his body and he realized what a terrible, irreversible thing he had done - perhaps the worst thing he had ever done - there was no time to reflect upon it or to weep. And even though he was not yet dead, the things that made him Sasuke Uchiha were already gone before gravity had the chance to pull him towards the ground.

* * *


	5. One

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Songs for this chapter: Where's My Love by SYML, I'm Sorry by Joyner Lucas, and Hold On by Chord Overstreet(!!!)

**One - Goodbye**

**9:53 A.M.**

When Naruto arrived, he had asked for the day’s menu as his first order of business before they would have their breakfast together. 

His loud entrance drowned out the already faint sound of the bathroom mirror breaking. 

Sakura had been so absorbed in her cooking efforts that she startled and nearly dropped the _donabe_ full of porridge when Naruto came barging in. She scolded him for being so brash and then returned to the task of preparing breakfast, while Naruto joined Madara and Obito at the dining room table. Madara immediately brought up the subject of his ‘owed’ vision, putting Naruto - who hadn’t actually verified whether or not his Six Paths chakra was up to the task - in the hot seat. However, Naruto was in such a sunny mood that instead of excusing his way out he caved in to the demand. 

It took several tries, but within five minutes both of the Uchiha were test-driving a brand new set of gloriously unremarkable eyeballs. They were all so amusing to watch that Sakura decided to wait until later to be uncomfortable about the fact Naruto had re-grown someone’s organs while they were laid out on top of her dining table. She would have preferred they use the bathroom or something, out of principle.

“Sakura, where the hell is Sasuke?” Naruto asked. “He’s totally blowing us off!”

Bathroom. The bathroom. Pausing for a moment to set down her cookware before responding to the noisy blonde, Sakura answered that Sasuke had gone to use the restroom upstairs, smoothing her apron with her hands to try and calm her nerves. Her eyebrows furrowed as the words left her mouth - he had been in there for over half an hour, though, she added. 

There was a beat of silence, and before any speculations could be vocalized they heard the faint but distinct thud of someone collapsing on the second floor of the home. 

Time seemed to slow to a crawl as everyone tensed in nervous anticipation. Sakura and Naruto exchanged an alarmed glance, and then Naruto was sprinting up the stairs towards the source of the commotion with the pinkette close behind. While Sakura ran into her room, he bolted towards the closed bathroom door and shook the handle hard enough that it should have broken off, knowing full well that he shouldn’t expect it to be unlocked. But he’d hoped that maybe this one time it would be. 

The scent of iron wafted up to him from underneath the door, and Naruto began to panic, his heart beating erratically in response to the overwhelming fear and dread that washed over him. 

  
  


“Sasuke,” he shouted, pounding on the door. _‘Sasuke!’_

  
  


“The sword is gone,” Sakura said, rushing out of her bedroom. “I knew something was wrong. I knew it. I...”

  
  


“Huh? What do you-”

  
  


“Shit. Shit! Naruto, _move!”_

  
  


The blonde jumped out of the way just in time for Sakura’s fist to connect with the inside edge of the wooden door, ripping it from its hinges; before it fell, she caught hold of the sides and threw it down and out of their way. Upon entering the bathroom, Sakura made a strange noise and collapsed onto her knees. Naruto already knew - in a general sense - what she was seeing without having to ask. 

  
  


“Fuck, oh my god,” he said, stepping past Sakura while curses continued to pour from his mouth. “Fuck, Sasuke. Oh god. What the fuck.”

  
  


The profanity was an involuntary reflex, not intentional, while his brain struggled to process what he was seeing. Naruto knelt down on the other side of Sasuke’s body, unconcerned about being dirtied by the blood that was rapidly pooling on the tile floor. Sasuke’s knees had folded underneath him when he fell, and his torso was slumped against the wall, bent at an unnatural angle. The expression on his face was entirely too peaceful: eyes closed, mouth slightly opened, and all completely still, as if he were only taking a nap. 

Naruto thought he knew what real pain felt like, but he didn’t, not until that moment. He’d been planning on taking the leap either today or sometime soon; confessing his truth, extending an invitation that was long overdue. So many dreams, so many disappointments, so many promises - and they all just vanished. Gone in the blink of an eye.

Sasuke's skin was incredibly pale, which made sense given the sheer amount of blood leaking out all around them. His stomach was the hardest part to reconcile, though. What was left of it, at least. Naruto was no expert on anatomy but had enough mind to recognize that the visible parts of Sasuke were not supposed to ever be visible, or out in the open. The current state of their friend was not a sight he or Sakura would forget. Never. 

  
  


“What do we do?” Naruto asked, already reaching for the sword’s hilt to throw it further out of their way. “Sakrua, what do we do? Is he dead? _What do I do?_ ” 

  
  


Sakura’s glazed over eyes suddenly snapped back into focus, and her hands began to glow bright green as they hovered over the wound. Or rather, part of it. Sasuke had jerked the blade out through the side of his abdomen, partially bisecting his torso and disemboweling himself. A method of suicide she had heard of but hadn’t yet witnessed herself. Sakura had encountered far more horrific injuries than this on the battlefield - in an anatomical sense - but this time it was self-inflicted and it was _Sasuke,_ which made it one of the most disturbing things she’d seen thus far in her life. 

Madara and Obito joined the catastrophe then, both too shocked to say anything - it was not a sight they’d expected to be greeted with upon regaining their vision - and were commanded by Sakura to go outside and start accosting people for help so that they could hopefully reach Tsunade, Kakashi, or someone else familiar. 

  
  


They would need help transporting his body in this state.

  
  


Naruto looked at Sakura expectantly, desperate for her to say something, anything to give him guidance. 

  
  


Thank god she had cleaned the bathroom the day before, Sakura thought. That would minimize the chance of any organs contracting an infection from surface contact.

  
  


“I need you-” she faltered for a moment, taking a breath before continuing, “-I need you to put everything you can back inside, and then hold the wound closed so that I can try and stop the bleeding.”

  
  


Paling until his skin was near the same color as a healthy Sasuke’s, Naruto nodded in understanding and began trying to piece his _soulmate_ back together. The sight, smell, and sound of their ordeal was nauseating and almost overwhelming, but for obvious reasons Sasuke’s potential survival was more important than any amount of visceral discomfort. 

  
  


“Don’t worry about placement, Naruto. We’ll fix that in surgery - right now I just need to stop whatever bleeding I can and keep the organ tissue from dying.”

  
  


Naruto finished the task as instructed, staring up at the ceiling to avoid having to watch while he pulled Sasuke’s separated abdomen closed, or as ‘closed’ as it could be in that state, and held the halves of him together. 

  
  


He couldn’t imagine how Sasuke had even managed all of this without making any noise; the fact that he was able to remain completely silent while maiming himself was more terrifying to Naruto than the visceral horror of the injury. Sure, he’d known that Sasuke was not altogether well in the head and needed psychiatric treatment, but he never imagined that his mental state was this bad. Things like this were supposed to be reserved for the truly insane, and Sasuke was not insane - at least, Naruto didn’t think so - which meant that instead, he was broken beyond comprehension. 

Everything was falling apart, out of place, leaking out around him, and it took every ounce of Naruto’s strength and self control not to be consumed by his own despair in that moment.

* * *

**10:07 A.M.**

Sakura’s hands shook as she scrubbed them clean in the sink of the decontamination room. Her body had been numb with shock since the moment she broke down the door and saw him lying there in a pool of his own blood, and...and he had all but bisected himself - _oh god oh god oh god_ \- Sakura shoved the image away. Without a doubt it was a ritual suicide, which Madara confirmed for them all; _harakiri,_ an old custom that was really only practiced by the Samurai in the Land of Iron nowadays. It was supposed to be an honorable death, and sickening as it was, it did make sense to her that Sasuke would choose such a method. A cruel twist, after all that had happened during and since the final battle of the war. 

  
  


“Haruno-hakase,” her circulating nurse called, barging into the room. They were in a hurry, every second counted. “We’ve matched his blood, it’s warming up now - the wound has been decontaminated as well. Tsunade-hakase has already begun, are you ready?”

  
  


“Yes.” 

  
  


Sasuke’s case was a special one, in the sense that it was especially severe. Medical ninjutsu was very powerful, yes, but there were limits - Sakura and Tsunade could regenerate the majority of their own bodies and organs, but this ability did not transfer to others to the same extent, and certainly not under such duress. It also did not work on non-living patients, body tissue, or cells, which further pressed them for time. This wasn’t a wound they could just pour chakra on and expect to heal properly - the affected internal organs would require extensive reconstruction and likely a tissue transplant in order to be saved at all. Tsunade had already prepared a portion of her grandfather’s cells, taken from the arm she had waiting for Sasuke, to be used for the expedition of said reconstruction. If that wasn’t enough, then….

  
  


Pulling her mask over the lower half of her face, Sakura put on her professional front and entered the OR, standing on the opposite side of the operating table from Tsunade. She locked eyes with her mentor and a wave of emotion threatened to spill over the fragile barrier she’d constructed. 

  
  


“Haruno, start cauterizing so Kangoshi can begin his transfusion,” Tsunade ordered. “I’m going to begin reconnecting the intestinal veins and arteries.”

  
  


She had to keep it together and focus as well as she did with any other patient, even though this wasn’t just any other patient. 

  
  


“Hypogastric artery is severed, reconnecting to the common iliac artery now,” Tsunade said. 

  
  


This was Sasuke.

  
  


“Renal arteries and veins have been severed. Inferior vena cava has no lesions. Retying into the left kidney. Both organs are intact - right kidney has entered end-stage failure. Removing to mitigate shock. Upper digestive tract and associated organs are intact, moving on to assess lower abdominal injuries.”

  
  


She wouldn’t let him die. He couldn’t. They could fix this.

  
  


“Sigmoid and cecum have been fragmented. Appendix is intact. Partial ileal segment located.”

  
  


Sakura continued her work while Tsunade called out her observations, and the scrub nurse followed along, helping regenerate and reconstruct portions of the intestine - grafting new cells onto the flesh per Tsunade’s instruction - before the tissue died and was unable to be salvaged.

  
  


“Ascending colon cannot be recovered.”

  
  


The sword had eviscerated his abdomen and sliced clean through several vertebrae, including the corresponding section of the spinal cord, but the gentle flexing of his diaphragm gave Sakura hope. If he was breathing then he wasn’t dead yet.

  
  


“Descending colon cannot be recovered.”

  
  


They started the blood transfusion. Sakura had always wanted to be a surgeon - she was good at it. She’d always thought it would be easy to operate on someone that she cared about, she would feel in control, she would be motivated and hyper-focused on saving them.

“Transverse colon cannot be recovered.”

  
  


His body temperature was a few degrees too low but the new blood would warm him up. Sakura was struggling to focus, she was petrified. Here, participating, she did not have the thin veil of ignorance provided by a waiting room. His prognosis was updated for her in real-time. There was no buffer zone prolonging her optimism.

  
  


“Removing excess tissue to try and locate the duodenum and jejunum.” 

  
  


Sakura noticed his diaphragm movement falter and then stop. Well, it became so slow that the movement was too slight for the naked eye. He was about to code - part of her was surprised it had taken this long for him to crash in the first place. She stopped what she was doing and tried to locate a pulse.

  
  


“Patient has no pulse. Tear down the drapes and begin compressions,” Sakura ordered.

  
  


Kangoshi - the circulating nurse - rushed to the intercom, while the scrub nurse removed their obstructions and started performing CPR.

  
  


“Rapid response needed in OR 1-0-2, we have a code blue,” Kangoshi said before quickly hanging up. “Code blue initiated, I’m going to get the crash cart.”

  
  


The other nurse continued her chest compressions, and Tsunade established an airway by holding Sasuke’s forehead down to keep his trachea open. Sakura began preparing an external defibrillator - a brand new technology that hadn’t been used much yet, but could be life-saving. It was modeled after lightning-release user techniques. Her mind was racing, and if not for her muscle memory serving as a sort of auto-pilot, then Sakura would have been completely defunct in that moment. 

  
  


She didn’t realize that she _had_ in fact stopped moving until Ino was leaning around her and prying the shock pads from her hands. After handing them off to a nurse to take over the role, Ino wrapped an arm around Sakura’s shoulders and guided her into the observation annex. She helped Sakura peel off her bloodied gloves and wash her hands, and pulled her mask down under her chin so she could breathe more readily. They sat down in two of the chairs near the viewing glass, and Ino turned towards her to speak. 

  
  


“I’m sorry. Tsunade asked me to take you out of there. It’s too emotional of an environment for-”

  
  


“Did you see?” Sakura asked. “Did you see what he did?”

  
  


“I saw, Sakura,” Ino responded.

  
  


For several seconds they sat in silence. 

  
  


“It cut through his spine, Ino. Massive bowel devitalization doesn’t even cover it, there is almost nothing left, just shredded tissue in various states of cell death.”

  
  


The atmosphere in the room was unbearably heavy.

  
  


“If we’d gotten to the bathroom even a minute later he would have already bled out. I can’t believe he even made it to the hospital.”

  
  


Ino didn’t say anything, reaching over and grabbing Sakura’s hand instead. She immediately clung to the blonde with a death grip, but Ino didn’t mind - better for Sakura to break her hand than the walls or some poor nurse’s skull. 

  
  


“I shouldn’t have left him alone for so long. I knew something was off, Ino. I _knew_ . We’ve been researching traumatic stress responses and I _knew_. After their fight, he told Naruto he was going to off himself. He literally said, “I will just put an end to myself”. That he didn’t have a reason for living, that when he wasn’t feeling nothing he was in agony. That he was just going to burden us. Hell, even before that I had to talk him down from a panic attack right in front of the ten-tails. Caused by a minor genjutsu - a clear trigger. He had a flashback and a panic attack. I also know that he has hardly slept at all since we returned to the village. He participated but was never interested in any of the card games I brought to entertain them in the cell, which he used to love. He always looked anxious and on edge. Never showed any emotion though, his eyes were empty. Like they have been since we were children.”

  
  


She took a breath.

  
  


“If our academic work was finished already, then Sasuke would be the textbook example of the kind of patient we are studying. He should have been kept here, in the hospital, but I let them lock him up instead. I knew. I knew and I still said nothing because I...because I was desensitized to it, Ino. Despite all of my training, I saw but didn’t acknowledge what was right in front of me. He has been like this for _so long_ , at some point these things stopped being warning signs and just became ‘Sasuke’ to me.”

  
  


In the OR, they had given him a shot of adrenaline and were on the fourth round of defibrillator shocks. Everyone in the room knew that it was all for show, for Sakura and for Naruto especially, even though he was being kept away from the room. He didn’t need to see this. 

  
  


“No one survives that level of physical trauma and organ damage,” Sakura said in an even tone. 

  
  


The activity in the room stopped, and everyone who had been working on resuscitating Sasuke stepped away from the table, save for a lone nurse who continued compressions, as per protocol. It had been twenty-four minutes since Sakura entered the upstairs bathroom. Less than two hours since they’d all gathered in the plaza. Three hours since the Uchihas were released from their cell. He’d been hers for an hour and it wasn’t enough, it was nowhere near enough, it was unacceptable. 

  
  


Tsunade’s back was to them, but Sakura could see the hesitation in her shishou’s form as she glanced at the clock on the wall. The older woman turned around and looked at Sakura through the glass. It was customary to call the patient’s death in front of their family, after receiving the family’s approval. Naruto could have been brought in, but he wouldn’t be...it just wasn’t a good idea, and if they brought Kakashi in they would not be able to keep Naruto out as well. So, as Sasuke’s sole medical representative, she locked eyes with her Shishou, and consented to the cessation of revival efforts.

  
  


**Time of death: 10:17 a.m.**

  
  


“He didn’t even scream, Ino. Sasuke did that to himself _without making a sound_.” Her voice had raised in both pitch and volume, the barrier finally giving way. “Who does that?”

  
  


Quiet sobs shook Sakura’s body so violently that she began to fall forwards off the edge of her seat. Ino caught her in her arms and wrapped the pinkette in a tight embrace, helpless while her friend - and a part of herself as well - broke into a thousand mismatched pieces, as they sat and cried together on the cold, linoleum floor of the operating theatre. 

* * *

**10:20 A.M.**

Naruto couldn’t breathe. Naruto was dying, his heart was going to give out. He fell to the ground clutching his chest, limbs seizing in shock while the panic attack ran its course.

Sasuke.

It was not the first time something like this had happened to someone Naruto was close to. Kakashi and Hinata had died not even half a year ago during Pain’s assault. Gaara had died too, when the Akatsuki extracted his Bijuu. He was reliving that nightmare, but this time it was ten times worse and there was no rinnegan-wielding Nagato, no Granny Chiyo, and no last-minute appearance of Hagoromo Otsutsuki to bring Sasuke back to life. 

He was dead. Sasuke was dead on an operating table ten meters away. When they first came to the hospital there was a wall and a barrage of nurses and his sensei and then Yamato between them, and now the veil between life and death was separating them too and there was no amount of chakra, or talk-no-jutsu, or rasengan big enough to break through to Sasuke.

Sasuke was dead.

“No, no, no, no, this isn’t supposed to happen, everything is going so wrong-”

  
  


“Naruto-”

  
  


“-it's not supposed to turn out this way!”

  
  


Hinata had never seen Naruto in so much pain and she was scared, everyone was scared - of him and what he might or might not do, but also _for_ him. Naruto deserved the truth, but maybe they should have waited for him to calm down before breaking it to him that Sasuke had been declared dead, or found a gentler way to tell him. 

As soon as the thought crossed her mind, though, Hinata deemed it foolish. There probably wasn’t an easier way to give that kind of news. How naive it was of all of them to think that, with the war over, everyone was safe and invincible and undying. That the darkness had passed and they had all made it out unscathed. She had even saved Naruto, and done so just in time to keep Neji from needlessly dying to try and save _her_ , even though she hadn’t needed him to. 

In reality, however, they weren’t even safe from themselves. 

  
  


Their friends had all come as soon as possible, to be there for Naruto and Sakura, and were in the waiting room at the end of the hallway being given the news as well. Naruto pulled himself off the ground and made another break for the operating room. Hinata moved to try and catch him, but Kakashi beat her to it. Kakashi started to say something and was quickly told off by Naruto; the Hokage looked beyond tired as he held onto his devastated student.

  
  


So often in his life Kakashi had lost those he cared about, and now he was losing two more - because the bond between Naruto and Sasuke was so strong and so integral to both of their beings, that Naruto might as well have died on that operating table with him. 

  
  


That was Naruto’s plan, to either die fighting each other or die fighting alongside one another. Not like this. 

  
  


“Why didn’t you let me help? I could’ve saved him,” Naruto was shouting, “I have my six paths powers, I have the fucking, the Uzumaki bite shit, but you wouldn’t even let me _try!_ ”

  
  


They had called Captain Yamato for backup before arriving at the hospital, in case things escalated, but Hinata sincerely hoped that it would not come to that. If Naruto did snap, then attempting to contain him would be futile, anyways. 

  
  


“Naruto, I understand what you are going through, and I can tell you that this behavior isn’t going to make it any easier,” Kakashi said. He was as calm-facing as ever, but the man had to have a limit, and one that was quickly approaching on the horizon. “You can’t blame your-”

  
  


Kakashi was cut off when Naruto threw him into the wall hard enough to crack the plaster; fortunately, not hard enough to break through or seriously injure Kakashi. Hinata was at a loss, and part of her wanted to cry like the old her would have, but she needed to be strong for Naruto. If he gave up then she would just have to keep believing in things for the both of them. She didn’t know what to do, but decided it was likely best if she didn’t physically intervene before Kakashi and Yamato did. Naruto’s fury was palpable and bordering on killing intent, yet there was no sign of the nine-tails, and that in and of itself was a miracle amidst the tragedy unfolding. 

  
  


“Shut the fuck up, you don’t know _shit_ ,” Naruto screamed, swinging a fist at the older man.

  
  


Unable to stop herself, Hinata darted over to him and caught hold of his good arm as he removed it from the hole he’d created in the wall. Kakashi had of course gracefully dodged the blow, and now stood a few paces away, muscles tensed in preparation to retaliate if Naruto tried anything while Hinata attempted to reason with him.

  
  


“Naruto, please don’t do this. It’s okay to be angry, but Sasuke wouldn’t want-”

  
  


It was dumb luck that Neji was on a different floor of the hospital, and thereby not present to witness Naruto shoving Hinata to the floor while spewing anger and vitriol at her. The ensuing fight would have resulted in at least one more death that day. Neji was no match for the nine-tails jinchuriki, not even with all the righteous contempt held for a person who dared to treat and manhandle his cousin - or any of his friends, for that matter - in such an atrocious manner. 

  
  


“Don’t you dare act like you know Sasuke. Have you ever even talked to him, Hinata? Huh?”

  
  


The wind was nearly knocked out of Hinata when her back hit the floor; thankfully she was able to brace her neck in time to keep her head from slamming against the tile. Sitting up slowly, Hinata controlled her breathing and cleared any contemptuous feelings from her mind, because she was not the person in that situation who was truly hurting. Hinata kept her chin high and her expression calm, her eyes locked onto Naruto’s in acknowledgement but refusing to vocally respond. She would rather he let everything out on his own, without risking further provocation.

  
  


“No, you haven’t. You were too busy hovering around me like a fucking fly!” he shouted, seething. “Living in someone’s shadow isn’t the same as _knowing_ them, Hinata. Don’t kid yourself.”

  
  


“Big mistake, buddy,” Kakashi growled, shoving the blonde from behind to throw him off-balance. “Huge. Yamato!” 

  
  


The decision to use the OR on the ground level of the hospital had likely been strategic in hindsight, Hinata thought, as she watched thick wooden roots erupt from the ground and wrap around Naruto’s limbs, effectively restraining him for the moment. She wasn’t hurt, physically or otherwise. Once upon a time she would’ve cowered, cried, and taken his actions as a deeply personal affront, allowing herself to be completely heartbroken and defeated. But she knew better. 

  
  


Through no fault of his own, Naruto had been one way for almost their entire lives - he had been Naruto, with Sasuke Uchiha as a constant presence in his life. And now that such an important and pervasive variable had been removed indefinitely, Naruto was someone else. He was someone _after_ , someone _without,_ a person who'd lost their shadow and therefore ceased to fully exist. Hinata was too smart to expect the same treatment she’d received before from an entirely new individual. 

  
  


Thrashing about like a wild beast within his living cage, it seemed that Naruto really would come apart at the seams. It was a rare thing to witness the total annihilation of someone’s character, to watch them begin the descent into madness, and seeing it happen was disturbing to the others on an almost primal level. Like being in a genjutsu, everything felt fundamentally wrong - but this wasn’t a genjutsu, only a terrible, execrable, macabre version of reality that they were forced to live with and confront. Hinata worried that her own mind might break from just watching Naruto experience that very thing. 

  
  


“Fuck you, Kakashi,” Naruto spat. His irises were red, but Kurama seemed otherwise in control of their chakra for the moment. “This is your fault, all of this, our entire miserable lives. You failed Sasuke when you let him leave the village. You didn’t do enough, didn’t fight for him. Why did you let him leave, Kakashi? You were so ready to kill him after the summit, so are you happy now? Is this what you wanted?”

  
  


The man was frozen stiff but otherwise unreadable as he sat back and took it while Naruto unleashed his wrath with shocking vituperation. 

  
  


“Everyone around you dies, Kakashi. At some point you have to realize that you’re the common denominator, you know? You’re the fuck-up. Killed the only teammate who actually liked you and the other one, who you left to die under a fucking boulder, watched you do it. He was so mad that he went on a goddamn crusade against the village out of spite. Set Kurama loose after taking him out of my _mother_ while she was _giving birth to me_. Do you know what happened next, Kakashi? Wanna help me finish the story?”

  
  


Kakashi stayed quiet, his composure unwavering in what appeared to be an incredible display of self-control. The hospital was deathly silent; their friends stood and watched from the far end of the hallway, none daring to move or say anything lest Naruto turn his torrent of invective on them instead. Iruka had shown up with Madara and Obito as well, but not even they were bold enough to speak out just yet. Hinata’s subconscious noted that the two men were no longer missing their eyes, but her conscious mind dismissed the information in light of what was happening in her immediate proximity. 

  
  


“No? OK, I’ll do it all on my own. Don’t worry sensei, I’m used to it, you know,” Naruto sneered. “Kurama was sent on a rampage that killed a fuck-ton of people. Including my parents, who sacrificed themselves to stop the disaster that the friend who _you fucked up_ caused. Thank you, by the way - because of that, Kurama was sealed inside of me, and I got to grow up being fucking _hated_ by our entire village. Along with the Uchiha clan, actually. In fact, they were so hated, that Itachi Uchiha was ordered to slaughter his entire clan after they started planning a coup d’etat to deal with it all. And Itachi did it! Men, women, children, infants, all murdered by a brainwashed and traumatized thirteen year old. Fucking thirteen, man. With the help of _your teammate_ , by the way.”

  
  


“What?” Kakashi whispered, his illusion faltering if only for a moment. 

  
  


“Yeah, Obito didn’t tell you about that part, did he? So, another event in which one of your various fuck ups was the catalyst. But wait, there’s more!”

  
  


Kakashi’s gaze flickered down the hallway, briefly meeting Obito’s pained expression before returning to his former student. The realization that he had just looked into Obito’s _eyes_ could only mean one of several things, and selfishly he hoped it meant that there might be a way to reverse this calamity.

  
  


“Not only did you ruin my childhood and cause Itachi to go fucking insane from being forced to murder his own family - after which said insanity inspired Itachi to ruin _Sasuke’s_ entire fucking life - but that guy Obito? He helped create the Akatsuki, too. The group led by Nagato, the guy who destroyed our village and killed almost everyone in it, including you, Kakashi, five months ago! _Five months ago_. But I digress,” Naruto said, watching while Kakashi backed himself against the wall, as if he needed the physical support in order to maintain his outward emotional stability. 

  
  


“Keep going, Naruto. I can take it,” he said; not sounding sad, or hurt, or furious, but defeated. Tired.

  
  


“You can, huh? Too bad you couldn’t _take it_ when the three of us mildly inconvenienced you by existing. Never even bothered to show up to training on time. Even though you’d already fucked up mine and Sasuke’s lives by that point, you still couldn’t find it in you to give us the incredible luxury of occasional punctuality. Poor Sakura had to deal with our shit while being simultaneously neglected by you - her sensei, her one shot at breaking away from her civilian family and her shitty dad. I bet you don’t even know about him, do you? Pathetic. I could go on and on about all of the shit that you caused, but the important takeaway is this, what we’re doing right now, and _why_ we’re doing it.” Naruto used his head to gesture around them. 

  
  


Naruto's eyes were possessed. Not by a demon, or Kurama, or any other outside force, but by his own darkness that he’d battled against for so long. By someone hidden deep within his heart who'd been devoid of positivity for what felt to them like an eternity, and who was perfectly content to have others join them in that miserable state. It was the same look they’d seen in Sasuke’s eyes after the Five Kage Summit, after he’d snapped.

  
  


“Kakashi Hatake, congratulations. Today, your cursed existence reached its fuck-up fever pitch when Sasuke Uchiha committed suicide via literal ritual disembowelment inside of Sakura’s bathroom,” Naruto announced. “That’s how he died. Alone, next to the toilet, in a bathroom with pink polka-dot wallpaper, by his own sword.”

  
  


The blonde paused while the words sunk in, his mouth splitting into a deranged grin. 

  
  


“Man, I bet you’re _gutted_. Just like Sasuke! Hey, why don’t you go join him on Sakura’s bath mat? Well, the pieces of him that I couldn't dig out of the fabric. I’m sure he would love the company, you know!” 

  
  


He began to laugh hysterically at his own sick joke - an irrational, nauseating sound - and thus Naruto had thoroughly disappointed, appalled, and silenced everyone around him with his unprecedented display of everything they thought he was fundamentally incapable of. His was conduct to which no more obloquy could reasonably attach.

  
  


Naruto continued to laugh until he was promptly shut up by what was likely the hardest slap he would ever be subject to, courtesy of Sakura Haruno. Her tears were far from being dry - they hadn’t ceased their flow, in fact - but regardless she’d found the strength to try and keep her only remaining original teammate from going even further off of the deep end. 

  
  


The blonde made no attempt to strike back, not even so much as a flinch was given in retaliation. That miniscule action, or lack thereof, was the first thing he’d done so far that genuinely hurt Hinata - that visible confirmation of her inferiority. She’d always wanted to move up from the third spot on Naruto’s peer totem-pole and surpass Sakura. She wasn’t foolish enough to think Sasuke could ever be moved from first. But now that she was technically in second, Hinata regretted ever wishing for such a thing in the first place. 

  
  


“Pull yourself together, Naruto,” Sakura said. “Don’t you dare leave me too, you asshole.”

  
  


“Sakura, I-”

  
  


“And don’t you _ever_ speak about my father. That comment completely disregarded my privacy and the trust I placed when I confided in you. And you’d better figure out a way to apologize to Kakashi sensei, because your information is incomplete at best and your blame is misplaced. Hinata, too. How dare you treat her like that! She died for you five months ago, and one month ago she saved your life. Who do you think you are?” 

  
  


Sakura managed to accomplish what no one else had been able to in the short time since Sasuke was pronounced dead, and Naruto finally started to cry. The roots binding his limbs retracted, affording him the dignity of collapsing onto the ground and crumpling into a foetal position to muffle his own sobs. Kakashi slid down the wall and joined him on the floor, followed by Sakura.

  
  


“I thought he was stronger, Sakura. He took the easy way out, god dammit.”

  
  


“Don’t say that,” Sakura whispered.

  
  


“Look what he did. I can’t believe he’s dead, fu-” a sharp intake of breath cut Naruto off as his lungs fought to take in more air. “Why does it hurt so much? Just stop. Please make it stop. Please. This isn’t real. It can’t be real.”

  
  


“I know, Naruto,” Sakura whispered. “I know.”

  
  


Naruto screamed, clawing at his hair with his head hovering above his knees. A loud, drawn out expression of pure agony and utter loss. The noise made Sakura whimper, and several of their friends - Hinata included - began to cry. It was such a horrible, terrible sound. 

  
  


“I loved him. I fucking loved him,” Naruto wept. “I figured out where Sasuke ends and where I begin. It’s here, this is where I end. Sasuke...I’m never going to forgive you.”

* * *

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Plugging the third song I mentioned because it fits eerily well, and I found it days after writing this chapter - believe it or not. Literally the first verse: 
> 
> [ You locked yourself in the bathroom  
> Lying on the floor when I break through  
> I pull you in to feel your heartbeat  
> Can you hear me screaming "Please don't leave me"
> 
> Hold on, I still want you  
> Come back, I still need you  
> Let me take your hand, I'll make it right  
> I swear to love you all my life  
> Hold on, I still need you ]
> 
> Anyways, yeah. Hold On - Chord Overstreet. https://youtu.be/a0sxc2jIYD0


	6. Zero

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Songs for this chapter: Twice by Little Dragon

**Zero - Apparition**

**10:45 A.M.**

Madara felt deeply for the young man in front of him, who was lashing out at the people he loved the most. He had been in that place before and knew the loss of self very well, and for a moment his heart was breaking all over again for himself, Izuna, and now for Naruto. In a cruel twist of irony, the person who managed to pull Madara back from the brink was now being subjected to the same event which had pushed Madara there in the first place. Over the past month spent in jail, he’d thought about his life so far, what he wanted to do now, and what his future could hold; but he’d been unable to reach a conclusion that felt satisfying on his own.

  
  


When he walked upstairs and saw what took place in the bathroom, however, the purpose of the second life he’d been given and spared for became crystal clear to Madara.

  
  


He’d finally had his eyes - normal eyes, of course, lacking any visual prowess - restored by Naruto not more than an hour ago. Perhaps it was wicked of Madara to take advantage of the young man’s high spirits for personal gain, but Naruto was completely capable of refusing and yet had still complied, and it was a good thing that he had. Given the current situation, Madara chose not to feel bad about that particular decision - it was a necessary evil after all, as they would soon realize.

  
  


Hearing the blonde’s tirade, Madara thought it laughable for Naruto to try and give Kakashi credit for  _ his  _ bullshit. Not to mention Kaguya Otsutsuki’s hand in it all. Damn that wench, he thought. Madara was beyond furious by the time Naruto had convinced him to flip sides and help them make a stand against the Otsutsuki, who were using them as playthings and would continue to do so. Kaguya was not the last, and evidently among the weakest of those who might come after them next. And so, by some great miracle at the hands of Naruto Uzumaki and his old rival Hashirama Senju, Madara Uchiha had actually laid down his arms. 

  
  


Unfortunately it was too late at that point to prevent Kaguya from returning, since Black Zetsu found himself an unexpected and rather unfortunate individual to pick up Madara and Obito’s slack: some snake-looking brat who'd been stupid enough to resurrect the old Uchiha. 

  
  


But that was another story entirely.

  
  


Naruto - the Naruto he was currently watching - didn’t have those convictions that Madara found so compelling, not anymore. The ones that were discussed between them all when he brought them before Hagoromo, the Sage of Six Paths. Naruto is the only one who could accomplish those things, who could incite that change which would save them from the Otsutsuki’s parasitic wrath.

  
  


While he didn’t have the literal foresight that some aforementioned alien might possess, Madara could still see very clearly the fact that they were doomed. This wasn’t supposed to happen. Perhaps in redeeming themselves, Madara and Obito had interfered with something they should not have, altered some unforeseen fate. In thinking about it, Madara was reminded of the lesson taught by an old fable he’d read as a young boy:

  
  


**_"Fate rules people's lives and those who interfere with fate do so to their sorrow._ ** **_"_ **

  
  


It would be unfair to pin the responsibility of saving the day unto anyone else when there was something Madara himself could do to rectify the unnecessary gash in the fabric of their reality. Even if Tsunade had been able to use some last-resort medical kinjutsu to save Sasuke, his nephew probably wouldn’t have appreciated the efforts. That would have no meaning to Sasuke other than meaning he'd accomplished nothing beyond causing a great deal of trouble, again, and would carry no motivation for him to change his outlook on life. Madara would argue that this issue of ‘not mattering enough’ was precisely why the task was his cross to bear, and his alone. 

  
  


Sasuke’s actions today, by Madara’s belief, were spurred on in large part by a lack of consequences - something inconsistent with his nonexistent self-worth and immense guilt, causing him to spiral beyond his psychological limits. Therefore some medical miracle would have no meaning to Sasuke. It would feel inconsequential, and likely would worsen his condition, potentially leading to a repeat situation. Madara had dealt with clansmen who held similar dispositions before; it wasn’t a terribly uncommon affliction for an Uchiha. He himself had been plagued by such thoughts once upon a time, having been pushed towards suicide after Izuna’s death. If not for Black Zetsu’s interference, Madara likely would have followed through.

  
  
  


When Madara began to approach the group in the hallway, the movement served to shake the others who'd crowded around out of their stupor by a small amount; not enough to question or stop him, though. There was nothing to fear, anyways. Kneeling next to Naruto and Sakura - the woman had been so kind to him, too kind - he carefully placed a hand on the young man’s trembling shoulder, a gentle touch to draw his attention. He had quieted down shortly after letting out that terrible wail.

  
  


“I owe you my thanks, Uzumaki Naruto,” he said, speaking in a voice so soft that one would scarcely believe it had come from Madara’s throat. “Everything is going to be alright.”

  
  


Naruto looked up at him, confused, and his anger began to bubble towards the surface again. “What? How could anything ever be al-”

  
  


“You’re wrong, by the way. About your sensei. I am the reason that Rin Nohara died in the way that she did, the reason for Obito’s madness, the reason Nagato was able to become what he did; I planned those things, and I am responsible for all of it. That man beside you is as much a victim of my actions as you and Sasuke are. I’d hoped to make right what I could, after our discussion. Unfortunately, it seems that I ended up killing you both regardless.”

  
  


Having said his piece, Madara stood to his feet and stepped around Naruto, making his way towards Tsunade and another vaguely familiar blonde woman. He gave a short bow to the granddaughter of the best friend he’d ever had, and asked her if Sasuke’s body was in the room behind her, which she confirmed to be true. Madara ignored her protests when he pushed past the two women and entered the ‘theatre’ as they called it. The name didn’t particularly appeal to him, and seemed rather macabre for such a ‘sophisticated’ society.

  
  


Sasuke was mostly hidden by a blue linen sheet, and Madara briefly lifted the covering in order to see the injuries for himself one more time, his curiosity having won out over better judgement. His gaze did not linger long, however; just as he’d expected, Sasuke’s condition was eerily similar to the state his dear brother had been in, albeit a great deal cleaner. Perhaps the two were connected somehow in their terrible fates. Life was so unfair in its lack of reservation for such awful things for people like himself, he thought, who might actually deserve the suffering. It would not do for Sasuke to remain like this. Madara couldn’t allow it. Not as the clan head, a close relative, or the person responsible.

  
  


On top of the thin material, his hands hovered over what remained of Sasuke’s abdomen, and a pale blue aura of chakra materialized around them. 

  
  


“Madara, what are you doing?” Tsunade yelled, entering the room to confront him. “Aren’t you on house arrest? You can’t just…”

  
  


Sakura appeared behind her, arm linked tightly with Naruto’s as if he might disappear were she to let go. His tears had slowed down a little bit and his breathing had improved considerably, but when he actually  _ saw  _ Sasuke’s body Naruto began to unravel all over again. Clinging onto him with renewed fervor, Sakura braced herself for whatever might come next. What incredible strength, Madara thought, it must take for Sakura to shoulder such profound grief for the both of them. 

  
  


“That jutsu,” Naruto said, his voice sounding hoarse and devoid of vitality. “Madara, how could you possibly know that jutsu?”

  
  


Madara hummed as the chakra around his palms burned a deeper azure with each passing moment. “I’ve been alive for quite a long time, and I did not awaken the rinnegan until I was nearing my natural death, as an old man. Whatever jutsu you think this is, I can assure you it is not that; though reanimation techniques like this appear very similar, I imagine.”

  
  


None in the room responded, their eyes locked onto Sasuke’s lifeless form, afraid to look away or blink in case they missed the moment in which reality might shift back into a more palatable version of itself. Kakashi joined the spectators then, followed by Obito, whom Madara noticed immediately tense up. The corners of his lips twitched up ever so slightly at the reaction - Obtio should have been celebrating Madara’s impending demise. 

  
  


“Have you had a memory, Obito?” Madara asked. “I used this same technique to revive you as well.” 

  
  


“This isn’t going to kill you?” Sakura asked.

  
  


“Ah. Obito was not dead that time, believe it or not. At least, not to...this degree. I also did the bare minimum for his survival; restoring his body was simply too-great of a risk to my self preservation at the time.” Madara winced in discomfort; he was nearing the final push. “Unfortunately, I don’t foresee my survival after this instance.”

  
  


They didn’t know what to say. Certainly they weren’t going to object; whether that was selfish of them, pragmatic, or both was up for debate but altogether irrelevant. There was a sensation of whiplash among the individuals - the world had gone to shit, a terrible reality only just beginning to settle in, and now there was a supposed resolution. A fix, a re-do, the second life-altering twist of the day, and it wasn’t even noon. It probably seemed too good to be true. 

  
  


Maybe it was, but was that alone anything worth complaining about? Certainly not.

  
  


As with the changed outcome of the war, this too would not come without consequences, ones that no person could predict; not without some divine power or fuckery, that is. But they could only hope that the consequences would be beneficial overall. 

  
  


“I think, perhaps, that this is the rightest thing I’ve ever had the mind to do, in all of my life. I am grateful for such an opportunity; a man like myself ought never to be so redeemed,” Madara lamented. Sweat trickled down the back of his neck, the action near complete. It was such a strange sensation to willingly relinquish one’s own life force to the soul of another. 

  
  


Naruto attempted to thank him, but was unable to find any words. If Madara’s intervention was a dream or hallucination of some kind, Naruto didn’t want to risk waking up. 

  
  


Madara didn’t mind any of that, however, because it was his belief that he was the last person on Earth who deserved any thanks. This sacrifice wouldn’t make everything right. In a way, it was inevitable - a means for the universe to retain balance, rather than some selfless or voluntary decision. The sphere of chakra emanating from Madara’s hands was such a deep, dark blue, that the color neared on black once it shrunk and disappeared, the last remains of his life force transferring over. 

  
  


“Thank you for waiting, little brother,” Madara said in a strained whisper, the moment before his collapse. “I’m coming to see you now.”

* * *


	7. One

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The new normal. Warning: physical affection, mentions of arousal. Not smut - just fluff/intimacy.
> 
> Songs for this chapter: Breathe by Lauv, Alps by Novo Amor(don't be fooled, its about toxic romance lol), and Anchor by Novo Amor

**One - Breathe**

**11:00 A.M.**

Breaths came out shallow and rapid in succession, as fleeting, insincere and disorienting as the events of the past few hours had been. The doors of the hospital flew open and he tumbled outside, exposed and trembling like a raw nerve under the sky’s indifferent gaze. It was a pleasant day, for the rest of the world - the sun shone bright and warm, the cicadas sang their static tune, and squirrels darted between trees as they began preparations for autumn and the cold winter months that would follow. Life carried on. The universe had not stopped. 

Naruto realized that sometimes when you break - that _this_ time - you can’t be fixed. Instead, pieces continue to fall away, and you break and break and break until there’s barely anything left. He was nothing but a mere shadow of himself, and what _did_ still remain of that self hurt and ached and made it near impossible to breathe.

_The expression on his face was entirely too peaceful: eyes closed, mouth slightly opened, and all completely still, as if he were only taking a nap. Sasuke's skin was incredibly pale, which made sense given the sheer amount of blood leaking out all around them. Naruto was no expert on anatomy but had enough mind when looking at his stomach to recognize that the visible parts of Sasuke were not supposed to ever be visible or out in the open._

_It was perhaps the first time Naruto had looked at Sasuke and not thought that he was beautiful. No, not because he was suddenly flawed in that way, but because there was nothing poetic, handsome, or even remotely appealing about watching the person you love turn into a corpse._

Doubling over and bracing his hands on his knees, Naruto did not fight the bile rising from the back of his throat. His gut clenched several times before violently heaving, but all that came out was stomach acid and the bit of water he’d drank that morning during physical therapy. Still his body heaved, desperate to clear out the invisible toxin making Naruto feel ill. It was a fruitless effort, grief could not be purged by any emetic. 

_“I did everything that I could, Naruto. His heart gave out. I’m...so sorry,” Tsunade said._

_“What do you mean? We just got here,” Naruto responded. “Surgery is already over…?”_

_“Yes, Naruto, I...Sasuke passed away.”_

Another protest from his digestive track sent him reeling forwards, coughing and sputtering and choking on nothing. 

Grief, he’d begun to realize, was just another form of love. Like water and ice, they were fundamentally the same yet differentiated by the conditions under which either state prevailed; love begets grief and that grief may yet melt back into its love, but grief cannot precede it. 

Naruto’s grief was an amalgamation of all the love he wanted to give Sasuke over the years, but could not. When he cried it formed the lump in his throat and rose in an upwelling to leak from his tear ducts, wetting his vulnerable gaze and decorating his cheeks with glistening candor. Some nights it would pool in his abdomen while he slept and Naruto would wake up feeling bothered, skin burning red hot as if he were glass submerged in a fiery kiln by some unseen gaffer. Lingering within every kiss he shared with Hinata, it was there still: intermingled with that alike but separate love he held for her, preventing Naruto from ever feeling wholly satisfied and instead constantly reaching for some ceaseless itch, all while wondering ‘what if’. Caged behind his ribs it thrummed against the back of his sternum and curled around his lungs in a commensalistic dance, perfusing the contents of his chest such that he would become hollow and bereft were it ever to leave. Like a drug, Naruto was addicted to this sorrowful love; his body ravaged by cravings as it denatured his self-control, leaving him jittery, starved, foaming at the mouth and willing to risk it all for one more hit despite never having gotten a proper taste to begin with.

When his stomach was done emptying its emptiness, Naruto stood upright, spitting out as much of the thickened saliva swarming his gums as he could before wiping the excess from his mouth with the back of his hand. He’d fled from the room as soon as Madara’s body fell, the elder Uchiha dropping like a sack of potatoes. Exactly how he imagined Sasuke’s had, upon hearing it thud against the bathroom floor. It made him sick - literally - and it made him _furious._ Regardless of whatever Madara did, Sasuke had still died. He had successfully taken his own life. 

Most people didn’t get lucky like that, didn’t have a Madara or whoever else. Because that’s all it was, in Naruto’s mind: luck. It didn’t make anything better, didn’t undo what happened, what he saw and what he _felt._ Naruto was relieved and ecstatic and _so fucking grateful_ for what Madara did, but nothing was fixed by his sacrifice. There was a problem before Sasuke’s death and a different problem created by it, one traded for the other; now, the old issue was back, the new one was here to stay, and both were compounding one another. So, it didn’t change the fact that Naruto’s heart had _shattered,_ that his mind was _fractured,_ that his spirit was _utterly decimated_ in Sasuke Uchiha’s wake, or that **he too** had drowned in his own despair, had died kicking and screaming in that hallway-

Naruto turned on his heel and stormed back through the double doors at the hospital’s entrance.

-because no one was reviving Naruto. No, he was not so lucky. 

Blood roared in Naruto’s ears as he wove through the bland corridors, back towards the OR where Sasuke should have woken up. When he arrived, however, there was no sign of the Uchiha he was looking for - only Madara, as his body was being covered with a sheet by Lady Tsunade and one of the nurses. Tsunade’s head snapped up when he approached, concern flooding her features. 

“Naruto, where did you go, are you alright?” Tsunade asked, reaching towards him. 

He swallowed the urge to laugh at the ridiculous question - he’d already tarnished too many of his relationships within the past hour. “Where is he?” 

“Sakura is with him - he’s being transferred to a room in the hospital’s inpatient ward,” she said. “North wing, first floor, room two-oh-nine.” 

“Huh,” Naruto exhaled. “Thanks, granny.”

Naruto hurried out of the room before she could try and get him to stop and talk to her; provide parental guidance, or something. Tsunade had lost her two most important people to horrific injuries as well, and if anyone could understand what he was going through it was her. But he didn’t want sympathy right now. Shit, what he really wanted was to just _hit_ something; not any person, but a tree or a boulder or an entire fucking mountain, to try and vent the pressure mounting in his skull. First he wanted answers, though, and Sasuke was going to give them to him. 

Even he knew that the only reason he hadn’t gone completely psychotic yet was because, for once, Kurama was withholding his chakra. In fact he was _hiding_ it, _actively resisting_ Naruto’s anger, an unprecedented happenstance. Then again, today was full of those, so was it really all that surprising that the ‘demon’ fox didn’t want to get involved either? 

When Naruto reached room number two-zero-nine, his recollection of the time between leaving the OR and arriving at his destination had already faded. A faint shroud of chakra tickled his senses, in what appeared to him to be some kind of sound barrier put up for privacy. So it was true, Naruto thought: Madara’s jutsu had really worked. Blinking as he stared through the thick, glass cut-out in the door, Naruto watched Sakura fuss over her companion and patient, pressing a plastic water cup to his lips and gently coaxing him to take in the clear fluid. Her eyes were rimmed in red and her hands shook but they were tremors of shock, weariness, and relief; not anger. Not hurt. Perhaps Sakura was stronger than him, perhaps she just had less of a heart. 

Or, perhaps, the factors determining their individual responses were far more complex than a simple black or white dichotomy.

The door creaked open and Sakura’s gaze shifted up to meet his, mouth opening slightly as apprehension flickered across her features. Naruto’s eyes drifted downwards and focused on the gentle pulse of Sasuke’s throat as he swallowed small mouthfuls of water, his skin still paler in color than usual, and adorned in a clammy sheen, but otherwise appearing healthy. Alive. Black eyes fixated on the wall in front of Sasuke, refusing to look at Naruto while Sakura quietly left his side. She stepped towards the blonde, opening her mouth to speak and then closing it a moment later. Instead of saying anything, Sakura cast one last forlorn glance at the fragile man behind her and left the room, leaving the two of them alone. 

Instantly, the air became colder, as Naruto’s darkened chakra permeated the space around them; the silence hung thick and heavy like a fog, stretching on and on and on without either man daring to break it first. Sasuke scratched the back of his head, causing the blanket wrapped around him to slip down and reveal a somewhat boney forearm not covered by the thin, half-sleeve hospital gown they had dressed him in for the time being. He was much thinner than Naruto remembered him to be at the end of the war. He looked frail, like he might fall apart and disappear again at any time. 

Sasuke was such a soft and messy thing, Naruto thought, nobody knew how to take care of him. Except for Naruto, and Sasuke refused to let him do even that much. 

“How could you?” Naruto asked in a low voice.

Finally, Sasuke’s eyes flicked over to him - guarded, weary, and so infuriatingly difficult to decipher just like they _always_ were. 

“I have so much shit that I wanna say to you, Sasuke-”

“Then say it,” Sasuke said, interrupting him. 

“What the fuck were you thinking, Sasuke? How could you, how could you _do_ something like this?” Naruto yelled, the sudden rise in volume causing Sasuke to flinch. 

Sasuke’s breathing sped up in tune with his heartbeat, but he did not say anything or make any attempt to answer the blonde. 

“A part of me feels bad for you, you know,” Naruto began again. “But at the same time I, you just look so _weak_ and I’m mad at you! Fuck, Sasuke. I don’t mean to be insensitive, but god dammit - look what you did! I had to, I had to put...”

He glanced down at his lap, gaze unreadable, and then looked back up at Naruto. 

“I’m so _fucking_ upset!” Naruto cried, voice cracking as tears began to flow anew from the corners of his eyes. “How could you be so selfish? You left me, you left me completely helpless. I had to pick up your fucking intestines and stuff them back inside of you, Sasuke. Shit, dude. What the fuck do you have to say for yourself?”

“I’m sorry,” Sasuke whispered, emotion cracking through his stony exterior and exposing his guilt and despair and _humiliation_ to Naruto, but it wasn’t enough. 

Naruto laughed, short and bitter. “You’re fucking sorry, how _rich_. Then why the hell did you do it? Why, Sasuke? You should have just talked to one of us. Why would you do this to me?”

“To _you?_ ” Sasuke snarled back, the blonde’s anger rubbing off on him. “I didn’t do this _to you_ , Naruto. This isn’t fucking about you! Not everything can be fixed by talking about it. There comes a point where talking about it doesn’t make you feel better anymore, and that point came and went _years_ ago. So I just lived with my mouth closed and my walls up and my heart hidden because it was the only way for me to survive.”

“Survive? Gutting yourself is what you call surviving?” Naruto scoffed.

“God, you’re not _listening_ , Naruto. That isn’t what I meant.”

“Fuck you, I am listening! What are you _saying_ , though? Huh?”

“I fucking hate myself, okay?” Sasuke replied, his voice rising sharply in pitch before breaking off; the sound of a dam cracking under the force of an entire ocean’s worth of suffering. “I don’t belong here. I don’t deserve to be alive right now, and I didn’t deserve to before, either. I lost my entire family when I was seven. Itachi forced me to watch it through his eyes. Every. Single. Murder. My aunt and uncle, cousins, pregnant women, _infants_. I had to see him skewer every last one of them. Over and over again.”

Shifting to sit on the edge of the bed so that he was facing him, Sasuke afforded Naruto the full view of his face. Tears were streaming down Sasuke’s cheeks, and it was rare for him to cry. Although lately, Naruto noted, he had seen Sasuke cry more often than he had during the entirety of their adolescence. 

“Do you know how that feels, what that does to your head? I’ve been suicidal since I was nine, Naruto. _Nine_. Don’t you get it? Killing Itachi was my only reason to live, to keep going. And Itachi is dead now, I killed him, so that was it. There was nothing left for me! Nothing but guilt, and pain, and feeling worthless, and all of the nightmarish shit cluttering my mind.”

“Fuck you, Sasuke,” Naruto said in a half-whimper, half-yell. 

“Excuse me?” Sasuke scowled. “Sorry, is that not good enough for-”

“You had me. You _have_ me, Sasuke, you always did - all you had to do was let me in.” Naruto’s voice had softened considerably, settling back into a more normal tone for him. 

The rise and fall of Sasuke’s chest did not come without effort, that much Naruto could tell - he seemed conflicted. 

“No, I don’t,” Sasuke murmured. “I can’t. I don’t deserve you, and you don’t deserve to have to put up with me. Everything I touch, I ruin, Naruto - I won’t do that to you, too.”

“Are you shitting me, Sasuke?” Naruto laughed incredulously, a fresh wave of rage heating his cheeks. “You did ruin me! You _died_ , Sasuke, you were dead. Gone. _Gone_ . You left me, and I felt - no, I _feel_ so fucking lost without you. So you don’t get any say in what I do or don’t deserve. And I hate the fact that you think the world is better off without you. What if Madara hadn’t been here, or hadn’t offered himself up? You died, you goddamn bastard, and it broke me into a million pieces. And even now, even now I’m not sure if I’ll ever find them all again. It killed me, too, but there isn't anyone around who's gonna fix that, you know!”

“But you still have Sakura, and Kakashi, and Hinata, and everyone else. Don’t put so much value in me, idiot!” Sasuke argued. “I’m not worth the trouble. Not good enough for you. Not enough, period.”

Naruto turned around and stormed towards the door, but he didn’t leave; instead, he located the barrier seal and performed several hand signs before infusing it with his own chakra. The window in the door and on the exterior wall both darkened, indicating that they were now sealed away from the outside world, tucked into a space where there was nothing of importance beyond the two of them. 

“Didn’t you hear anything I said after our fight in the valley, Sasuke?” Naruto asked, turning back around and rooting himself in the ground several paces away from the man in question.

“Of course I did. I get that you value me as a friend, but-”

“No. That isn’t what I’m talking about.” 

“...what?”

Clenching his fists in frustration, Naruto tried not to let his anger run rampant again. Surely Sasuke was playing dumb right now, he wasn’t this stupid. Friend. _Friend._ That could not have been anything other than a joke. 

“You took everything from me today, you know,” Naruto said. “I had even started thinking about us, about….something stupid, so don't worry about it. But now-”

“About what, Naruto?” Sasuke demanded. 

“About you and me, Sasuke. You were always beautiful to me, always enough for me, you were always the one I was so certain about.”

“I...what are you even saying, Usuratonkachi?”

Naruto took three long strides towards Sasuke before stopping so that he was standing directly in front of the other man. Sasuke was a bit taller than Naruto, and when he straightened his back fully while sitting on the bed his head landed at just about chest level on the blonde. Reaching a tentative hand out, Naruto grazed his fingers along Sasuke’s forehead, brushing his unkempt bangs away from his eyes. He trailed a single digit down the bridge of Sasuke’s nose, the soft touch causing the latter to shiver ever so slightly.

Continuing his descent, Naruto traced along the outline of Sasuke’s lips; soft, enticing, unattainable, not belonging to him. When he reached the edge of Sasuke’s sharp jawline Naruto splayed his fingers out over the left side of Sasuke’s face, cupping his cheek and tilting his head upwards. Sasuke’s dark eyes swam with a mixture of confusion, anticipation, and a faint trace of longing as he waited with bated breath for whatever Naruto was going to do or say next. 

He was hesitating, staring at Sasuke’s lips and grazing the pad of his thumb back and forth along the full bottom half and causing him to shift uncomfortably beneath Naruto’s gaze. Sasuke blinked and it was as if his long, thick lashes were enticing him, trying to draw him closer. Did he want to cross this line? Did _Sasuke_ want him to? Did Naruto even care? Naruto wasn’t sure whether or not they would be able to go back to the way things were if he-

No, Naruto decided, halting that train of thought. What a farce. Nothing was ever going to be the way it was before, not after what happened. There was nothing left for Naruto to lose, so he might as well indulge in this one thing just to see what would happen, how it could feel. What they could have had. 

Bending down, Naruto closed the distance between them until their noses were almost touching. He could feel Sasuke’s breathing pick up again: cool, shallow gusts of air fanned across Naruto’s mouth and chin, pushing against his own warm exhales. 

“You’re wrong, Sasuke. I did lose everything,” Naruto whispered, tongue darting out to wet his lips.

Sasuke stared back at him, unblinking, waiting and hoping against hope that Naruto would keep going. 

_"You_ are my everything.”

In the span of a single, fluid moment, two lifetimes worth of anticipation collided and collapsed into a singularity, echoing outwards with all the terrific longing of unfulfilled desires. Naruto slanted his mouth against Sasuke’s, tender and compassionate while he held back the enormity of the need he felt, lest he overwhelm the man. Instinctively, Sasuke froze - despite the equal fervor of his own want. He was shaken up, sensitive - they both were - and Naruto knew this, only lingering together for a moment before pulling away again. 

He looked at the rose colored blush tinting Sasuke’s cheeks and the wide, unbelieving look in his eyes; a stark contrast to his usually cold and masculine exterior. Though it was not new information, being this close to Sasuke reminded Naruto that his eyes were not so black and lifeless as they appeared to be from afar: they were a rich, purplish brown, almost like the chocolates Sasuke claimed to abhor. Chocolates that - every year during their early teens - he had so craved to gift the Uchiha with each time Valentine's Day rolled around. But that was not something boys did for other boys, it was not accepted at the time and even now was still painfully taboo outside of their peer generation. So Naruto would sit back and watch with disguised, petulant glee as Sasuke mercilessly rejected the advances of any who approached him. It felt like he was seeing Sasuke like this for the first time all over again, and Naruto thought he looked breathtaking under this renewed light. 

“I misspoke that day, when I said that I loved you,” Naruto said. “There is no past tense. I still do. Fuck, I don’t think I’ll ever stop.”

“Then don’t stop,” Sasuke said, his voice faint but sincere. “Don’t stop, Naruto.”

Not needing to be told a third time, Naruto kissed him again with a little more confidence, and Sasuke returned the gesture in kind. Feeling him press back caused a contented sigh to push its way out from Naruto's lungs. Even after all these years, Sasuke tasted the same as he remembered; it wasn't an exact flavor that Naruto could describe, but rather it was familiar, and correct. He didn't taste like something distinct or other, he tasted like fresh air or cold water on a hot day - like he belonged, like he was an extension of Naruto's own being. Sasuke was a part of him, not some fleeting sensation such as 'taste'. 

He did, however, smell surprisingly pleasant for someone who had recently been a corpse; then again, Naruto had been sweaty, bloody, and most previously a dry-heaving mess, so neither had room to complain about potential odors. A moot point in the end, since they couldn't have cared less either way. 

The hand cradling Sasuke's face combed its way through his bangs and along his scalp, nesting comfortably within the silk strands covering his nape. This new grip allowed Naruto to pull them even closer together, claiming Sasuke's mouth as if it had always belonged to him. Which was how it _should_ have been, Naruto thought, as Sasuke's right hand flew out and fisted itself into the soft black cotton of his shirt, clinging onto him like a needy child. Humming with satisfaction regarding Sasuke's eager reaction, Naruto gave a light tug on the base of his lover's hair, causing his jaws to part open in a surprised gasp. 

He seized the opportunity provided to nudge his tongue into the warm embrace of Sasuke's own keening mouth, drawing a low moan out of the other man. Gripping at Sasuke's hip with his free hand, Naruto settled himself as best he could between the other's legs. He could practically feel the velvet, smooth texture of Sasuke’s skin beneath the airy fabric of whatever sorry undergarments had been provided by the hospital.

The hunched over position soon grew uncomfortable for Naruto, and didn’t provide the unrestrained access he so desired. As gently as he could - though still without warning - Naruto lifted Sasuke upwards by the backs of his thighs. Ignoring his adorable yelp of surprise, Naruto turned them around and sat himself down where Sasuke had been, placing him onto his lap so that his legs were straddling him. It was a position he’d only ever seen or used with women, and so Naruto was slightly worried that Sasuke might hate it; but there was no protest from the other man. 

Instead, he impatiently molded his lips and tongue back with Naruto’s, wrapping his one arm around the blonde’s shoulders to keep himself steady. After letting the blanket fall from Sasuke’s shoulders, Naruto slipped an arm around his waist for added support, simultaneously tightening his hold on Sasuke and pulling them that much closer. The slight movement caused an unexpected, faint, and shockingly pleasant friction between their hips, and Naruto reflexively bit down on Sasuke’s lip, eliciting a delicious sounding, high-pitched whimper from the raven. 

It felt like Naruto was in a dream. He dreamt of Sasuke often, it was true, and so somewhere in the back of Naruto's mind it all seemed a little too perfect, too convenient. 

An additional layer of desire began to build within both of the men: something repressed, something they each - _separately_ \- had only ever indulged in during private moments, alone with nothing but their hand and lecherous thoughts of the other to keep them company. Naruto boldly slipped his hand beneath the open-back of the hospital gown, splaying his fingers across Sasuke's hot skin and grazing over the bump of his spine. He really has gotten thin, Naruto thought, smoothing his hand upwards and over the back of his rib cage where the skin was more sensitive, and wondering if he had been this boney earlier that morning. How he had possibly failed to notice. Just like he had failed to notice that Sasuke was-

_Sasuke was slumped against the wall at an unnatural angle, blood draining from his body and his peaceful, sleeping face to pool on the bathroom tiles. And his stomach, oh god; he was no expert on anatomy but even he knew that these things weren't meant to be visible._

"Naruto!" Sasuke’s shout dispersed the fog in his mind; he was becoming impatient. "I asked, about what - what were you thinking 'about us'?"

And just like that the dream ended, and all of the darkness and harsh truth of reality came crashing down around Naruto. But the feeling, that blissful wholeness, still lingered on his lips - and even though he knew it was not real, Naruto was breathless when he woke up.

He stood back in that same spot, three long steps in-between Sasuke and himself; back where the fantasy had begun, back where the two branches of fate were budding and ready to sprout into trees. The air felt meaningless and stagnant as it sat in Naruto's lungs, incomplete now that he was disconnected from the sweet exhales of the moon in front of him. 

Naruto remembered how he'd fallen with such terrific speed, and compared it to how easily he had melted within the dream just then. How easy it was to abandon all else. He should have known better than to fall more in love with Sasuke. He'd told him about his heart: that it was cold, relentless, broken, irredeemable. But foolish, naive little Naruto had just flashed his goofy grin at the raven haired boy, and told him he would fix it. He would bring Sasuke back to the village, or worst case, he would die to keep Sasuke from destroying it. They would die together because if Naruto had to kill Sasuke anyways, then there would no longer be any reason for him to go back or become Hokage. Not if he wasn't complete. 

But in the end Naruto failed, now everything was over and _he_ was the one who needed fixing. Naruto had apparently taken over Sasuke’s role in the relationship: he was the party who, despite knowing what was between them, couldn’t get past the fear in his head, of what they could be. Something he wouldn’t acknowledge or admit to himself for the foreseeable future. 

They were living in different chapters of the same book, and for a long time Naruto hoped that they would meet up again before the story was over. And maybe they would, eventually, but ‘eventually’ was not that moment. ‘Eventually’ was not today.

Anger and sadness roiled in the pit of Naruto's stomach, dark and storming and threatening to come untethered - and that is how Naruto knew what path he had to choose. Sometimes the road less traveled is less traveled for a good reason. 

Vulnerable black eyes were still staring at Naruto, watching him carefully and swimming with anticipation, with hope. For a moment he was almost sucked in all over again, ready to fling himself into Sasuke's space, to kiss him with all of the passion that he'd withheld during that short dream - that illusion of a beautiful unreality - and bind them together in eternity. But Naruto Uzumaki was stronger than some carnal temptation. Or perhaps he really was just scared, terrified of whatever unimaginable anguish awaited him if he were to somehow sink even further into abyssal depths of their bond. Afraid that the red string of fate would tangle itself into a noose and wrap around his neck. 

"I told you it's nothing. Look, I'm sorry, Sasuke-"

It was killing him, what he had to say, because what he really wanted to say was precisely what he'd said in that other world.

_Yo_ _u're my everything, my all and more._

"-but I need room to breathe." 

When there was no blatant protest from his friend and the grief - the sorrowful love - started to upwell again, Naruto spun around and began to walk out of the room, dismissing the barrier he had placed. Pulling Sasuke's Hitai-ate from his pocket, Naruto stopped and stared at the relic for a moment. To him, it was a physical symbol of the truth that existed between them, of that particular thread in their bond which held the potential for something greater, something unknown, something dangerous. Something Naruto had held onto for so long, waiting and hoping for a chance that he now decided had come too late and at too great of a cost. Something he could no longer bear to keep watch over while foolishly believing that Sasuke would ever be ready to accept it. That he would suddenly become capable of being something he was not. So Naruto ripped the bandage from his heart, believing that Sasuke would understand what this action meant, and hung the old hitai-ate on the inside doorknob for Sasuke to retrieve.

This was him taking the easy way out, too - the path of least resistance - and was perhaps the only time in all his life that Naruto had put himself first. The only time he chose something other than just 'Sasuke'. 

A part of Naruto wished he could have a second chance to meet Sasuke for the first time, to re-do those critical moments leading up to the present so that maybe, maybe they would have a chance. It hurt that this was the end for them - they were supposed to be better than this. They could have been the _greatest_ story. But even if he didn't want to, there were things in life that Naruto had to accept, or had to learn, and there were people he couldn't live without that he would have to let go of regardless. It would leave - and already had left - a gaping wound in Naruto's heart, one that he knew was probably never going to heal, but he couldn't just sit around and stare at his wounds forever.

Life carried on - people depended on Naruto, and Naruto couldn't be dependable if the person that he himself became dependent upon was unreliable.

The first lone wave in a new ocean of tears cascaded down Naruto's cheeks, sweeping across the shared continent of their love and eroding the edges until it became unrecognizable, as Naruto shut the door on 'what if' and sealed their fate for the final time. Thus the sun and the moon would continue their cosmic dance, circling around one another but never drawing near enough to become fully immersed within the other's orbit.

* * *


End file.
